COPL Revisited!
by Krisa612
Summary: The title says it all- a new version of the Courtship of Princess Leia, with a dramatically altered plot loosely based on the original novel. (The rating is very general; more specific ratings will be indicated for each chapter, as needed.)
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes**: Hello! This, obviously, is the first piece I'm posting here…so I'm a little nervous, in addition to being not quite sure how this site works. But, never fear, I'll figure it out eventually. Anyway, I think the title and summary pretty much explain themselves, but just in case they don't, here's a little elaboration on them: you know the novel "The Courtship of Princess Leia"? Yeah, that one. Well, I didn't find it particularly satisfying, in more than one way, and decided to rewrite my own version of it. Basically, it's exactly what it sounds like- the story of the courtship of Princess Leia. I used a few very basic plot points from the original novel by Dave Wolverton, but pretty much twisted them to my purposes and added everything else. One more thing I'd like to say: as an amateur writer trying to improve my skills, I'd very much appreciate any feedback my readers could provide for me, whether in the form of emails, reviews, or anything else. I welcome any kind of review, though I prefer the honest ones!

**Disclaimer**: Just like I'm supposed to, I'd like to say that I do not own Star Wars or any of the characters, places, plotlines, concepts, or ideas associated with it. I also do not own Dave Wolverton's novel, its storyline, or its title. I am not attempting to offend or take advantage of anyone with this story- merely trying to amuse myself and maybe a few others. I will remove this material as soon as possible if I find that it violates…well, anything important. All of that now being said…I hope you enjoy the story!

**Chapter 1**

Princess Leia Organa stood on the podium in the center of the former Imperial Senate Chamber and realized that, for the first time in her life, she was in danger of breaking down and showing her anxiety to the public. It had started that morning, actually: she'd awoken with a sense of nervousness already settled deep in her lower abdomen. Her first thought upon waking had been _Han's coming home today_. Quickly on its heels had followed: _the Hapans are coming today_. Mon Mothma had told her only a few days ago that these two events coincided- and that she, Leia, would be the main government official present at both.

Now, standing on the podium alone, with all eyes on her, she restrained herself from chewing her lower lip while she waited for the Hapans to make their appearance. An extremely wealthy system of planets near the Core, the sixty-three worlds of Hapes were governed primarily by the queen mother in a decidedly matriarchal society. A crew of ambassadors had come to Coruscant just recently to discuss allying themselves with the New Republic- not joining them, no- that would be too much for the fiercely proud and independent nature of the Hapan people. But an alliance, apparently, was acceptable. _And whatever they suggest will have some special benefits for them included…probably well disguised_, thought Leia wryly, _and I'll be the one who has to catch them_.

And that was what worried her most. The ambassadors who had approached Mon Mothma and the rest of the Inner Council had made it very clear that the delegation wanted audience with Leia- and only Leia. Sure, the rest of the Council and the government could be present if they wanted to…they just couldn't participate. _Why me? What do they want with me?_ Leia asked herself once more. _I'm just a Councilor. And I'm not even in charge of inter-planetary relations. Okay- so maybe I've got some influence and I _am_ pretty active in recruiting new systems…but still, Mon Mothma has all of that under her belt and more… _

Her thoughts were interrupted by a ceremonial fanfare that she recognized as distinctly Hapan in origin. She took a deep breath and smoothed the front of her pure white gown as she turned to face the entrance to the Chamber. The Hapan procession began with a force of very decorative (and probably very lethal bodyguards), which represented the essence of Hapan culture pretty well, in Leia's opinion: _we're definitely pretty, but watch out- we're powerful, too_. And they were, particularly when one considered the immense amount of wealth they had at their disposal. Which was why today's negotiations were so important. The whole New Republic could be affected by what went on here, today. Which was why Leia took another deep breath and made herself smile one of her famously disarming smiles- the ones that had won the hearts of so many worlds. _Let's just pray it will win these guys over, too_, she thought as she nodded regally at the guards.

Following the body guards where the people providing the fanfare: obviously hand picked from the most skilled of Hapan musicians to impress whoever they might be playing for. And following them was a man who Leia assumed was a head-Ambassador or some such- the man who would be directing their negotiations, in any case. He must be pretty important, she thought as she looked at him. He was positioned on a sort of platform, standing very tall and looking straight ahead of him…at her. She thought briefly that his coloring and style of dress vaguely resembled that of the average Alderaanian man before reminding herself to concentrate on the ceremony. The interesting thing was that the platform was resting on the shoulders of eight more men, arrayed all around it in a box formation, each one standing as straight and tall as their charge. Under their intricately embroidered vests, Leia could see impeccably formed muscles rippling in silent strain. The platform was lowered to the floor about twenty feet away from her and she wondered for a split second why he didn't come any closer when a woman stepped away from the group that was following the Ambassador and came forward to stand directly in front of Leia. Leia did not betray her confusion when she introduced herself as Chief Ambassador Lamarr Tir'rol.

"And now," she told Leia graciously, "If you will permit, the gift-bearers shall come forward."

Leia nodded equally graciously. She sucked in her breath only slightly when the first two of the "gift-bearers" came forward with a tray held between them, piled with sparkling gems from Gallinore. Gallinore was one of the member planets of the Hapes Consortium, and famed for its peerless gems. She sucked it in a little less when the next group came out bearing a specimen of the galaxy-famous Prihana plant that was said to have medicinal qualities that could cure the effects of almost any poison. By the time the third group arrived, announcing that they were from the third planet and toting a suit of absolutely state-of-the-art armor that was probably worth millions, she didn't have to gasp at all.

And so it continued, until sixty-two of the planets of the Hapes Consortium had presented their gifts to her. Precious stones and gems and rare plants, the most prized material (natural and synthetic) along with coveted perfumes and the most up-to-date weapons that technology could provide were piled around her, almost haphazardly, it seemed. Leia took advantage of the pause in the line of gift-bearers so look around her and realized that it wasn't so haphazard after all. The Gallinore gems were strategically placed next to that spool of material, so that it brought out the emerald color scintillating amid the blue. The Prihana plant contrasted favorably with the sleek collection of deadly weapons that lay near it. No, these people knew what they were doing, she realized. The thought brought her back to strict attention. _I have to be careful_, she reminded herself. _These people were originally pirates and they're notorious for getting what they want_.

"You may have noticed that only sixty-two of our member worlds have presented gifts," the Ambassador said, making Leia's attention turn back towards her. Leia was about to comment something to the effect of _Well, gee, as if I'd been counting_, but the woman continued without giving her a chance.

"This is because the sixty-third planet, which is our capital world, Hapes itself, has a very special gift to present to you."

Leia heard the almost triumphant note in the Ambassador's voice. _And they must want something really badly_, she reflected, preparing herself to expect an offer that probably seemed amazing and wonderful and completely beneficial and even more probably had a serious catch somewhere in it. But nothing could have prepared her for what happened then. Absolutely nothing.

Her stomach started churning when the tall human stepped off his regal platform and started walking towards her at a steady and measured pace. Nothing seemed amiss: his handsome features betrayed nothing but utter calm and serenity. His elegant clothes gave the impression of someone highly cultivated, someone born into aristocracy and used to classy things. The only thing that was strange was that she couldn't see whatever gift he was planning to offer her. _But it's probably some jewel so rare there's only one of them in the whole galaxy. Or maybe he's planning on pulling some chip with a zillion credits on it or something like that out of his pocket_, Leia thought, surprised at her own cynicism. But she'd seen too much in the past few years (or maybe all her life) to believe that the Hapans were doing this out of pure generosity or good will. She had to admit, however, that she'd never seen what happened next before.

The man, who she noticed was probably only a few years older than she, stopped about two meters in front of her, just below the steps of her dais. The sun coming in from the skylight that the Senate had had constructed to replace the damaged ceiling streamed down as if it had been staged, lighting up his features so that his light brown hair glistened and his eyes reflected two beams of light as they looked into hers.

"Your Highness," he greeted her with a voice that was strong, yet soft and melodious, "I come to you in all humility bringing greetings from my mother, Ta'a Chume of Hapes. She would have liked to come in my stead and present these gifts to you and your government, but I begged her to allow me to take her place. You see, Your Highness, I have seen you only from afar, for the most part, but even so, I was inevitably enchanted by your beauty and your wit and it was my greatest desire to meet you in person. Now that I have had the privilege, there is but one thing I can do."

Stopping there, the young man (_Ta'a Chume is the Queen Mother…if he's her son, he must be the Prince…Isolder, I think_, Leia realized after making a quick search of her mental databanks) knelt down in front of her and reached into a pocket of his ornate vest. For a short moment, Leia thought she had been right about the credits, and she gasped in shock when he produced something that glinted in the sunlight. It was a ring, she saw, a ring made of the richest of metals and the most precious of stones.

"Princess Leia of Alderaan, I present you with the sixty-third gift. Myself, with this ring as a token of my hand…in marriage," he said, bowing his head in front of her and holding the ring up between them.

Leia could feel all of the eyes in the Chamber staring intently down at her. She wished that the crowd that had come to watch today would start tittering as crowds usually did when something exciting happened. But, like her, they were all holding their breaths, waiting to see what she would do. The only problem was…she didn't know what she was going to do any more than they did. Her flustered mind plowed instinctively through the problem: obviously, the gifts came as a package- all or none. Though the average bystander might not have noticed, numerous subtle and not-so-subtle hints had made it obvious to her and, she suspected, to any other skilled ambassador in the room. Almost as obviously, this guy was desperate for a wife…and then it dawned on her. It wasn't him that was desperate for a wife- it was his mother that was desperate for a successor! Leia remembered now that the Queen Mother had had only Isolder- a boy. There had been no daughters to inherit the throne. And now she probably needed to be sure that she had an heir before it was too late. So they were willing to give all these riches to the New Republic in order to get a ruler. The question was: how much was Leia willing to give for the New Republic? Everything, right? She was stopped in mid-thought when suddenly a name flashed through her mind. Han.Han was coming home today. _Han._ A million and one images flashed through her mind in the split second between that thought and the next one, almost bringing a smile through her defenses to her face, for all to see. She took a deep breath before answering the Prince.

"I am honored and humbled by your kind offer," she told him in her most gracious voice, "But I must admit that you have taken me very much by surprise. If you would be so kind, I would request some time to consider."

"But of course," the Prince answered her, standing up and letting the hand holding the ring fall gracefully to his side, "I have been far too bold and have not taken into account your feelings as a lady," he apologized, "I will await your answer with pleasure and gratitude."

"I thank you for your kindness," Leia replied and they bowed politely to each other before Isolder turned on his heel and left, signaling for his men to follow him. She noticed that four women immediately fell into step with him, two slightly ahead of him and to the side, and two slightly behind him, also to the side, the four of them forming a box around him. She also noticed that a troop of ten men were left behind to stay with the treasure, looking, like everything else she had encountered from Hapes, beautiful but lethal.

She refrained from letting out a noisy sigh into the voice amplifier that she knew was still on, and tried to relax enough so that it wouldn't seem that she was nervous or upset about everything. The background noise from the crowd that she'd anticipated before started now. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mon Mothma coming towards her and prepared herself for an onslaught of criticism. _You should have accepted right away, now they probably won't give you the chance again. You didn't maintain eye contact throughout the whole presentation. You should have smiled more when he asked you. Were you hyperventilating? The voice-amp picked up on it…_ Instead, Mon Mothma smiled and linked arms with her. Leia's warning signals flashed. When Mon Mothma smiled like that, it was usually bad news.

"Well, Leia, all I can say is that I was right when I thought that we, as a government, would some day think of you as our most prized possession. You performed beautifully…and best of all, you didn't give any indication as to your answer, which gives us complete freedom to discuss this at leisure," she practically gushed as she steered Leia through the crowds of senators and media droids.

"But all of that will have to wait for later- for now I suggest you go talk to a certain young man over there that seems remarkably eager to get to know you better." Mon Mothma discreetly indicated Isolder with a flick of her eyes, "this could be the best thing that ever happened to the New Republic," she said before giving Leia a little push in the Prince's direction. Leia smiled as graciously as she could, fuming inwardly. She had always admired Mon Mothma and held her in the utmost respect…but that didn't stop her from being downright impossible (and impossible to understand) sometimes!

Isolder saw her coming and smiled in her direction as she walked demurely towards him, years of training enabling her to hide her distress and cover her feelings with exactly the right combination of sweetness and sincerity.

"Princess Leia, I am honored to be able to enjoy your presence a little longer," he said, gallantly offering his arm. For her part, Leia admired his hair (which reached a little past his shoulders and was all tied back except for two wisps on either side that framed his face), even as she felt a flash of irritation. How she hated when people treated her with such formality! Her irritation switched targets as she berated herself: _the poor guy's only known you for ten minutes- give him a break!_

"No, no, I am the one enjoying a great privilege," she protested, deciding to play along with his little formality for the moment. She'd worry about clearing that up later. Actually, it could be useful. While he was polite, it didn't seem that Mr. Prince would be at all bashful when it came to getting closer to her. She might end up being thankful for that barrier of formality before long.

"Do tell me a little of your home-planet. I'm afraid I've never had the opportunity to go to Hapes," she said, in the interest of making conversation and putting him at ease- home-planets were almost always a safe and comfortable subject. Unfortunately, he had a better grip on his memory than she did.

"I beg to differ, Princess Leia," he told her, "I seem to recall that you have been to Hapes. It was long ago, and perhaps you were too young to remember. Your father, the Viceroy, had come to beg assistance for the Rebellion, which was in its beginning stages at the time, and brought you along. I believe you would have been no more than four years old. However, you were put in the care of my nanny droid while your father had audience with my mother. Unfortunately, my mother did not grant your father any assistance, so I suppose he considered the trip a waste of his time. But, you see, it was not. Because it provided me with the opportunity to meet you. Luckily for us, my mother has become less conservative and more generous in her old age." Isolder brought his hand up to give hers a squeeze where it was resting on his other arm. _Yeah, more generous…or more eager to jump on the bandwagon with the winning team_, Leia thought, surprising herself with her own cynicism for the second time that day.

"What a charming memory," she responded, her voice conveying nothing of her thoughts, "I only wish I could remember it, too."

"That's all right. Perhaps you will accompany me to Hapes someday in the future, and we shall make some new memories together." Leia's warning instincts flashed in her head for the second time that day. _This is getting to personal and too close to the marks_, she thought, _this conversation needs to be stalled until I can chat with the Council…and get a grip on my own opinion!_

Luckily, she had the perfect excuse: "I'm terribly sorry, Your Highness, but I must end this delightful conversation. A very successful mission is returning to us today, and I must be there to welcome them."

"I understand. But please…my name is Isolder."

Leia nodded. _There goes the 'keeping the formalities as a safety-barrier' idea._

"Good-bye, Leia. I will look forward to our next meeting with great pleasure," he said softly as he lowered his lips to her hand. _Somebody's trained this guy well_, she thought, allowing a mild sense of pleasure to flare up in her. It was so rare to meet someone well versed in the art of court behavior these days…

Ten minutes later, Leia's private speeder was rushing her back to her apartment. Upon arriving, she quickly changed into another gown and allowed one of her assistants to fix up her hair. She would have liked to change the style completely- it didn't really suit her new dress well, the way it was, but there wasn't times. So with a few stray locks tucked and pinned back into place and some fresh cosmetics brightening her face, she got back into the speeder and arrived at the main docking platform, the one used for all arrival and departure ceremonies, just as the announcer on the dais was announcing that the starships had come out of hyperspace.

Leia got out of her speeder and tried to seem energetic and enthusiastic as she climbed the steps to the dais (_second one today_, she thought, _this is really too much_) that she would share with a few other council members, among them the famous Admiral Ackbar. The noises of anticipation of the crowd alerted her to the fact that the main ship, the Commander's flagship, was in the last few stages of its descent, penetrating the atmosphere.

It was only when the flagship appeared through the clouds and began the visible portion of its descent to the platform that Leia recalled exactly whom it was bringing home to her. And that was when the 'what if's started in. _What if I've changed too much? What if Han has, too? What if we both have, and I've forgotten how to be with him? What will I tell him about this whole Hapan situation? What if he's already heard about it? What if he's mad?_ And even worse, so much worse that she couldn't even think it: _What if he's forgotten about me and he doesn't care?_ Anxious worry slowly seeped through her. 'What if's, most of them not even nearly plausible, continued to run through her head at a break-neck speed as the huge Star Cruiser floated gently down onto the docking platform. The wind it created tugged insistently at her hair, pulling several loose tendrils away from their carefully crafted arrangement. She was dimly aware of Admiral Ackbar's strong hand on her arm, pulling her back slightly so that she wouldn't be harmed by the de-pressurization of the ship. She remembered suddenly that she was standing in a small group of government officials in front of the large crowd that had come to welcome the perpetrators of the successful mission back home. She must not let her emotions show.

However, she realized as a familiar silhouette sauntered characteristically down the ship's boarding ramp, that was going to be very difficult. Nothing about Han seemed different, unless you counted that his walk seemed even cockier than before- if that was at all possible. His walk had also gotten more determined…and it was heading him directly towards her. Leia's heart flooded with warmth as his face became visible. His features displayed only serene confidence and solemnity…except his eyes, which were twinkling and sparkling as they locked onto hers. She was reminded of a holo-vid she had seen on Alderaan as a child of an old legend involving a noblewomen and her Senator husband who was away for long periods of time and always kissed her passionately upon his return, to the great pleasure of their viewers. Leia had a sudden, unbidden image of Han doing the same now, but brushed it quickly from her mind.

Before she had a chance to collect her thoughts and emotions, they were face to face, his proximity flustering her slightly and making her cheeks ever so slightly pinker.

"Welcome home and Congratulations, to you and your men, General Solo," she intoned, speaking into the voice-amp. Mon Mothma had told her exactly what to say, but seeing Han had driven it completely from her mind. A great cheer rose from the crowds anyway; it wasn't as if they knew who was supposed to say what, or even cared.

"Glad to be of service, your worship" Han told her, adding the last part in a lower voice that he knew only she would hear over the cheers of the crowd and inclining his head respectfully in a gesture that completely contradicted the look in his eyes. Luckily, no one from the crowd could see that. What the crowd could see, however, were his hands going slowly to her face, brushing the tendrils of hair out of the way as he bent to kiss her soundly and thoroughly. Another cheer, louder than the first, came from the crowd. Leia was oblivious to the cheer, however, as well as the disapproving glances coming from her superiors, and, frankly, everything but Han's strong hands on her face, his hot lips on hers, and the feel of his arms and love enveloping her once more. Her hands went, seemingly all by themselves, up to his head and entwined themselves in his hair. Her whole body was leaning against his before she realized what she was doing and stepped away abruptly, managing to make it seem like a graceful withdrawal to the crowd, which was in a state of gossiping ecstasy.

The band recruited for occasions like this one began to play a military fanfare at a signal from Admiral Ackbar, and the crew and fighting force began to emerge from the Cruiser. The crowd continued to cheer and young men broke away from the ranks as they spotted their wives, girlfriends, and sweethearts. The procession and the dignity surrounding it was forgotten as loved ones were united once more. Which was fine, if you were a common soldier and his wife, reflected Leia, just not if you were a General and a Councilor. But all such thoughts were erased from her mind as Han took her hand. Whatever members of the crowd still watching them cheered once more, but considerably more faintly this time. Leia discovered they were giving her a headache anyway. But she couldn't reach up to rub her temples, not here where people might still be watching them, however unlikely that seemed now.

"Come on, no one's watching us anymore," Han told her, tugging her down the back steps of the dais. Her hand fit perfectly in his; at least that hadn't changed, thought Leia as she followed him, her mind reluctant but unable to stop the rest of her.

Han glanced down at her while they made their way through the crowd.

"Got a headache?" he asked casually. At her look of surprise, he explained, "You're doing that thing with your eyebrows- you always crinkle them like that when you have a headache."

"I'd forgotten how well you know me," Leia told him truthfully. Han grinned at her.

"Well, I bet I can remind you a little more: I bet the reason you have a headache is because you haven't eaten anything all day," he said, raising his eyebrows expectantly at her. At her protests, he raised his free hand, the one that wasn't occupied with holding hers, in mock defense.

"Okay, okay, I'll amend that. You ate one of those dinky little nutri-bars you're so fond of using as an excuse to skip meals this morning. But you haven't eaten anything since then- no real food all day," he declared triumphantly.

"I didn't have time-" she began to explain, before she remembered this was Han she was speaking to. _Han_. The one who could see through her in the blink of an eye, especially when it came to her own well-being.

"Okay, fine. I didn't eat. But it wasn't my fault!" she couldn't resist saying, allowing a hint of a smile to escape. It felt so _good_ to be loved and worried about like this- as a person, not a- how had Mon Mothma put it?- a "prized" figurehead. She let her head drop slightly to lean on his shoulder.

"Exactly. So that's why we're going to go get some food now. Actually, using my spectacular mind-reading skills, I've determined that you're also tired. So you know what we're going to do? We're going to pick up some out-food from that Alderaanian restaurant and take it home and enjoy it in comfortable clothes, in the lounge, while you catch me up on all the Coruscant gossip and I regale you with my latest adventures."

"Nothing's ever sounded more appealing," Leia told him as he opened the door of the taxi-speeder he'd just waved down. Leia worried fleetingly about her private speeder before deciding that the chauffeur droid would find his own way home- and they could always page him from the apartment if he didn't.

As she settled back into the cushioned backseat of the taxi-speeder and sighed, she didn't notice that just as Isolder had earlier pushed all thoughts of Han from her mind, Han had just unknowingly reciprocated that action.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes:** Thank you, everyone, for your kind reviews. I am quite honored that you thought my story worth taking the time to review! I felt it was only polite to answer your comments, but I don't know how to get in touch with any of you, so I'm doing it here in hopes that you'll come back to read this.

_Liz_: Why, thank you! I'm glad you think so.

_Ann_: Yeah, the original COPL only worked for me until I realized just how much better it could've been. I thought the essential plot wasn't _too_ shabby, but the characters' reactions to events were totally _not_ in character and just plain un-realistic, at times. As for Leia's indecisiveness…well, I'm going to be having plenty of that as well, but I think (I hope!) the difference you'll see in my story is that it will be justified (again, I _hope_ so, anyway) instead of just randomly there. I do want it there because I think it shows that she's human, too, not just some "ice princess" or robot or something, with no feelings, but I also wanted to present reasons behind the way she reacts to stuff, instead of just putting it there without explanation. Hopefully, that'll work out. When I post it, I'd love to hear if you think it does or not!

_Princess Daisy_: Hi! waves I know what you mean about the forum. Much sadness- I really miss our friendly little community, not to mention all the great fics that were going on there. I found another forum that seems very nice, too, and a lot of us from the other forum are there now. I think it might be advertising or some other against-the-rules thing if I posted it here, but email me, if you want, and I'll send you the address!

_Pitdroid_: Well, I hope I won't disappoint with this one!

_Clare_: Thank you very much! And I definitely plan to continue posting. I'm up to chapter nine, right now, just going back and proofreading and editing and things. Hopefully all that will be up by the first week in July. Then I'll be away for a month, so I won't be able to post, but hopefully I'll finish writing it during that time, so it'll be all ready by the time I get back!

_Audreidi_: Like I explained above, I definitely plan to continue this 'til I'm finished! I hope you continue to think the changes I made work well for the story…I think they get a little more drastic as it goes on, but I'd love to hear what you think of them then, too!

_Sue_: Glad you think it's a good idea! And as for Han and Leia ending up together…well…now that would be spoiling the story, wouldn't it? If I told you, I mean. You'll just have to wait and see!

**Chapter 2:**

As Han Solo followed his best friend and lover into her Coruscant apartment and glanced around, he decided that it hadn't changed much in the five months he'd been away. From what he could see, the main room looked exactly the same. The group of lounge chairs and one sofa that were arranged around a low table facing the large viewport were still strewn with datacards. Another grouping of chairs faced a holo-projector, and a small table and two or three chairs were arranged behind them…and a datapad was blinking on the table. A few random articles of outerwear were hanging on the hooks right next to the door. In the adjoining room, the kitchen, Han could see that the simple auto-chef was impeccably clean, but the table had its share of datacards as well…

But Leia obviously wasn't as impressed with being back in her own apartment as he was. She was actually visibly sagging.

"Long day, huh, sweetheart?" he suggested, taking her shawl/cape and placing it on an unoccupied clothes-hook.

"You could call it that," Leia said, pushing the morning's events out of her mind. _I'll deal with it later; I'll tell him later_, was swiftly becoming her new motto.

"Well, don't worry about it- it's over," Han told her sagely, placing the plasti-box full of Alderaanian out-food on the table in front of the holo-projector.

 "How about you go take a nice long whirl-bath and I'll get the food out, okay?" he suggested. Leia smiled and went over to put her arms around him.

"You know what's terrible, Han? You've just gotten back from a five-month mission (during which you were stuck on a crowded ship) today, and already you're taking care of me, when it should be the other way around."

"And that's why you love me, sweetheart," Han responded, putting down the containers of food to wrap his arms around her and reach down for a kiss, "besides, I've been sitting on my tail all day for all five months telling other people where and when and how to go about having all the fun and getting all the glory. I'm telling you, being a big Commander-in-charge guy isn't nearly as much fun as being the command-_ee_. Now go relax- I can feel bunches of stiff muscles all over you."

Leia smiled again and headed past her bedroom to the 'fresher unit. A few minutes later, she was settled in a steaming bath that included a special treat- real water! She had left the door open and she could hear Han puttering around, setting up the food. When she heard Threepio turning on as scheduled (he was programmed to turn on a half-hour before she usually got home) she winced. _I bet Threepio was one thing Han didn't miss too much while he was gone._

"Oh, welcome back, Captain Solo," Threepio exclaimed upon entering the main room to find Han setting the table, "Princess Leia had not alerted me that you were to be arriving today. May I congratulate you on the success of your mission?"

"Go for it," Han answered in the usual sarcastic tones he now mostly reserved for Threepio.

"Hey, Threepio, is the holo-'jector still on the blink?" he asked a moment later, apparently finding use for the droid.

"No, sir, Artoo fixed it the last time he and Master Luke visited; I believe four standard weeks ago," Threepio told him, apparently thrilled to be of use to someone such as Captain Solo.

"Oh, great. Been a while since I've been able to tune into the Coruscant news- for all the comforts they stick in those star cruisers these days, they still haven't managed to get decent reception in hyperspace," Han commented, reaching over to turn on the holo-projector.

Engrossed in the comforts of her bath, Leia didn't notice. In the main room, their dinner was set out on the table, covered by Threepio so that it wouldn't cool. Looking up at the chrono on the 'fresher wall, Leia decided that it would really be rude to linger in this bath any longer…especially since, as far as her muscles were concerned, really relaxing might take the whole night. She had just stood up and dried off and was wrapping herself in a soffsilk robe when she heard Han's voice:

"Hey, Leia," he called in some strange tone she couldn't quite place.

"Yeah?" she called back, her chest constricting slightly as she moved into the doorway. She had a bad feeling about this…

"Big day, huh?" he said, repeating his earlier words.

She walked into the main room and gasped as she saw what the holo-projector was showing. It was the evening news, and they were devoting almost their entire session to covering the important diplomatic meeting between Princess Leia Organa, Councilor of the New Republic, and Prince Isolder, heir apparent to the throne of Hapes. At that particular moment, the last of the gift-bearers were leaving their offerings at her feet.

"Han, please don't- I was going to tell you-" Leia pleaded, not realizing that he hadn't even seen the worst part yet. Her stomach clenched as she glanced again at the projection and saw that Isolder was just beginning his approach. The holo-camera operators zoomed in some more to catch each and every emotion that flickered across her face- as well as the comeliness of the Hapan prince. Both Han and Leia stood in silence as the image switched to a different, later point in time, showing Leia arm in arm with Isolder, chatting amiably._ I did a good job pretending to be carefree and happy when I was with him_, Leia thought, watching her own face,_ maybe too good_. She was brought back to the present problem by Han's tight, forceful nod. The air in the room between them suddenly seemed thick with…something, making it hard for her to breath. Or maybe it was the look on Han's face.

"Yeah, I can tell. And, uh, _when_ were planning on telling me about this, again?" he demanded. His eyes were narrowed ever so slightly, and his cheeks were getting progressively redder. Leia remained silent for a moment. She'd always been able to come up with something to say when she was with government people or members of the alliance or even Imperial senators (never mind whether or not whatever she said had any truth to it- at least it almost always sounded good) but she'd never been able to do the same with Han, especially not since she'd admitted she loved him so long ago on Cloud City. The memory of that day brought tears back to her heart, if not quite to her face. Some of her emotions must have shown, because Han's face softened visibly.

"Okay," he sighed tiredly, "okay. I think we're both too tired to deal with a big argument right now. So how about we sit down and eat our dinner, and we can sort things out calmly and like civilized beings, okay?" he suggested in a quiet voice. Too quiet. He was obviously acting like this for her benefit. _Out of love for you, you idiot_, Leia scolded herself, _he doesn't want to hurt you, so why don't you return him the courtesy!_ She nodded silently and they both moved towards the table.

Han served them both, and they began to eat. Han waited, not speaking, and not looking at her as he mechanically brought food to his mouth. Leia stared down at her plate as she chewed, gathering her wits and her courage and reminding herself: _this is Han. Han_. Finally, she looked up, and began her recital of the events of that morning, which now seemed so far away.

When she was finished, Han looked back down at his plate, "So basically, this guy is offering you lots of money if you'll marry him and go home with him and be the queen of his sixty-three luxury planets." He snorted bitterly.

"Sounds like a good deal to me," he finally said. Leia lifted her head and her eyes, suddenly, to look at him.

"Please say you didn't mean that, Han," she managed to whisper. Han shook his head ruefully.

"I don't know, sweetheart. He's rich, he's powerful, he can give the New Republic everything it needs to get on its feet, he's from a good family, he's a prince, on the news the just called his style 'reminiscent of the Princess' native Alderaan'…and, hell, he's even good-looking. I can see why you'd want to marry the guy- and why everyone else would be thrilled if you did," he finished in the same acrid tone. Leia couldn't decide whether to leap into his lap and kiss him for all she was worth, to make up for this whole incident, or slap him. She opted for the middle road.

"Han, how can you say that? After all we've been through, how can you believe I'd ever want to be with anyone other than you?" she asked in a quiet tone, "I love you. And only you."

"Yeah, well-" Han began to retort. Then he fell silent and looked into her eyes.

"Okay. Okay, you know what? I believe you. I can tell by the way you're looking at me that you're being honest- as honest as you _can_ be. And I love you for it. If it was anyone but you, I'd say there were still some things to be explained. But we're both tired. So we'll worry about that later," he said in blunt but not harsh tones that didn't quite match his words. But Leia found that she agreed anyway. There was so much more to be said, but she was much too tired to deal with it now. So she simply got up and knelt by Han's chair, putting her head in his lap.

"Thank you, Han," she said quietly, pretending to be content with that resolution. And Han stroked her hair absently, doing the same.  And both realized that they really weren't satisfied at all but that apparently neither was going to voice their sentiments.

Leia's last conscious thought before drifting off to sleep was: _Whatever happened to **us**?_ 

The next morning, as expected, the central comm-unit in Leia's apartment was blinking to signal that she had a waiting message. Even though she had been anticipating it, her stomach still clenched in apprehension when she read Mon Mothma's signal number on the screen. She tapped it to view the message, and her abdomen stiffened even more.

_Urgent meeting in the Council Room at 0900. Your presence required. _

What would she tell Han? She knew he'd been looking forward to spending the day together, even in light of last night's events. Maybe even especially because of them. She needed to show him that she loved him and him only, somehow. _And what am I supposed to tell the Council? They're expecting me to do the right thing, all of them. How can I let them down when the help from the Hapans could mean so much? We could end the war, I bet, and bring peace to worlds that haven't known peace in decades. Why, there're even some children out there who have only known war, their whole lives. We could find a planet for the Alderaanian refugees. We could…we could…we could make everything well again for everyone. They all elected me Councilor…don't I owe it to them to do whatever I can to help them?_

Her thoughts were interrupted by two familiar arms coming around her waist and an equally familiar set of lips planting a kiss on the back of her neck.

"Gods, Leia, normal people aren't even awake yet and you're already tenser than they'll be at the end of their day!" Han exclaimed, his breath tickling the back of her neck and making the little stray hairs there flutter slightly. Leia decided to be honest, and pointed at the commscreen.

"Here's why."

Han read it, his face falling progressively as he went.

"And you're going," he finally said. He meant it to be a question, but the fact that he already knew the answer prevented his voice from achieving the necessary inflection. As Leia turned around to face him, she could feel her heart sinking. He was mad. _I knew it_. __

"I have to, Han. I'm a Councilor; I can't miss meetings in general, and this one's special anyway."

"Fine. No one's stopping you," he responded, his voice flat. _And that's what I was afraid of_, Leia answered silently, in her head. She nodded, trying not to let her disappointment show. _I have to go, but, gods, he could have at least pretended to try to stop me_.

Leia was the last one to arrive at the meeting, and the nine other Councilors, plus Mon Mothma, stopped talking to stare at her as she walked in. Taking a deep breath and hoping it didn't show, she quickly pasted what she hoped was a realistic smile on her face, and sat down. Apparently Mon Mothma was eager to get started.

"All right, now that we're all here: I think you all know what is to be the subject of this conference," she began, "I would like to offer you all the chance to comment on the Hapans' proposition, before we begin."

One of the newer Councilors, Borsk Fey'lya, tapped the button of his status indicator right away. The light by his section of the table blinked, indicating that he had something to say.

"Councilor Fey'lya," Mon Mothma acknowledged.

"Chief-of-State, my fellow Councilors," he began, by way of greeting, "I think I can speak for all of us when I say that I was astonished and amazed by the proposition made by the Hapan dignitaries yesterday. That a system usually so independent and resentful of intrusion as the Hapes Consortium would approach our humble government with an offer as beneficial to us and entangling to them is purely a miracle. And because of this, it is my opinion that we should take advantage of this situation as quickly and efficiently as possible."

He paused, to gauge the reaction of his fellow Councilors, before continuing. _The mark of a true politician_, thought Leia.

"I have here the financial summary of the past few months, which I would like everyone to observe." The Councilor pushed a datacard into the main port in the center of the table and everyone looked at the terminals in front of them. A table full of figures appeared on each screen.

"As you can all see, our expenses have far exceeded our revenues almost from the very birth of our government. My predictions for the coming months indicate that we will not be able to change this trend in the foreseeable future…unless something unexpected happens. My friends, this 'something' occurred yesterday, and now all it needs in order to practically guarantee our government financial stability is a little cooperation and dedication on our parts. If we accept the offer of the Hapan delegation, the New Republic can not only be out of debt almost instantly, but also put many of our plans towards previously unattainable goals, into action. And the person who can make all of this possible is our very own Councilor Organa." Councilor Fey'lya sat back in his chair, an expression of triumph on his face.

_It's that simple_, Leia agonized silently while the rest of the Council mulled over Councilor Fey'lya's characteristically excellent speech_. I just have to say yes, and all of our problems are over. If only I didn't have to marry the guy and give up the rest of my life to do it…_

"Thank you, Councilor Fey'lya," Mon Mothma said before looking around the table, "any other opinions?"

A M'thrakian Councilor Leia hadn't ever really talked to but who had a reputation as being a little on the overly-sympathetic side spoke up at that moment.

"That is all very well and good, Councilor Fey'lya, but doesn't your theory completely disregard the sacrifice that would be demanded of Councilor Organa?" the female alien asked, "It is obvious that this proposition would benefit the New Republic as a whole, but do we not pride ourselves upon caring for each and every citizen whenever possible? I do not think it is acceptable to simply assume that Councilor Organa should accept the Hapans' proposition and marry their prince. After all, this would have an effect on the rest of her life- she would be the ruler of a system of sixty-three planets, not to mention the fact that she would be married to a man that she has only met once or twice. And I think we all know that Councilor Organa is already…shall we say…involved, with another."

Most of the human councilors coughed politely into their hands at that statement while those of other species performed whatever their particular culture's indication of embarrassment was. Leia wasn't sure whether to glare at the Councilor from M'thrak for insinuating about her relationship with Han or thank her for understanding the terrible decision that lay before her.

"Excuse me, Councilor Mar'ak, but I do believe that your statement qualifies as pure speculation and gossip. I'm sure that, again, I speak for everyone when I beg you not to use methods of that kind as political arguments," Borsk told the M'thrakian councilor smoothly and cuttingly.

"It is not speculation! It is consideration for a fellow citizen of the New Republic who is being asked to make a sacrifice that no one should be forced to make!" Councilor Mar'ak protested, her voice rising.

"I am most sorry for dissolving your petty illusions of idealism, my dear Councilor, but I must bring to your attention the fact that this is a war, not a garden party. We have all made many sacrifices, and I do not think it would harm Councilor Organa to do her part. Even a Princess must be called upon to make sacrifices, on occasion," Fey'lya finished with an air of smug triumph, laced with faintly discernable irritation. 

"Councilors, councilors!" Mon Mothma's serenely calm voice cut through the eruption of voices in debate that followed, "I believe the course we must take at this time is a middle ground. Councilor Fey'lya, Councilor Mar'ak, of course we must all make sacrifices and I do not think any of us, least of all Councilor Organa, should be reprimanded for lack of dedication."

From there, the discussion dissolved into a two-hour argument about the degree of sacrifice that should be expected from each citizen of the New Republic in response to the need of his or her fellow citizens. By the end of the session, it had little to do with the original topic, and nothing had been resolved.

Mon Mothma finally dismissed the Council, deciding that they would reconvene at the same time the next day; an answer must be given to the Hapans within a week, no later.

As the other Councilors filed out, talking quietly amongst themselves, Leia took her time folding up her datapad and collecting her datacards and other miscellaneous things. Finally, she and Mon Mothma were alone in the room.  

"I'm sorry about the turn the meeting took today, Leia," Mon Mothma said, going to Leia's side to put a hand on her arm, "You shouldn't have had to go through that, for all Borsk's talk of sacrifices. We all know that you, of all people, have made every sacrifice demanded of you- and some that weren't- for the Alliance and the New Republic. You're a model to us all in the area of dedication."

Leia opened her mouth to thank her for her praise, combating it already in her mind_. Maybe I did make sacrifices…but it's not like they had much effect…Alderaan…_

"You mustn't be cross with Borsk, however, Leia. He means well. It's just that he can be a little…overzealous in his desire to see the New Republic progress, at times. Councilor Mar'ak was right, in some respects. It is your life, Leia. The decision is entirely yours. You must find the right balance between being dedicated to your people and being true to yourself. I know it is a difficult decision to make, Leia, but I have faith that you will make the right choice- you practically always do."

With that, Mon Mothma favored her with a smile, something one rarely saw from Mon Mothma, and left the room. Leia absently picked up her glass of vita-water from the table and took a sip, turning Mon Mothma's words over in her mind. Her aide walked in then and asked if she would like more water, breaking Leia's train of thought.

"No, thank you, Isa," she said, shaking her head and affecting a smile for the girl's benefit. If only all decisions were as simple as that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Notes: **Thank you for the kind reviews, everyone. Again, here's my response to them:

_Clare_: Thank you! I definitely plan to!

_Stormygurlz_: Yeah, I thought the original COPL was lacking many things…particularly accurate characterizations. I don't pretend to claim that I'm remedying all the problems, but consider this an attempt. So I hope my additions and modifications are to your liking!

_Princess-Kinky_: I definitely agree about the snubbing Han all the time thing. I always thought it took a plausible beginning for Leia's behavior and then just went completely down the wrong path. I mean, I can see Han and Leia having all sorts of arguments and being a little harsh to each other on occasion because, like you said, they both have very strong wills. But I don't think the original COPL really portrayed that realistically.

_Pitdroid_: My feelings exactly! Don't you just want to hug Leia and then give her a sturdy shove in the right direction? But I think that situations are usually a lot more murky-looking when you're actually in them than when you're just observing, and I wanted to illustrate that. Plus, when you pull a guilt-trip on someone as self-sacrificing as Leia, especially with her history, I would imagine that she reacts.

_Princess Daisy_: Well, I'm making some minor changes and fixing lots of typos and things, so I'm glad to hear that you're interested enough to re-read. Don't worry- only about five more chapters and then it'll be new stuff for you! (I know, because it isn't written yet!) Glad to see you made it to the forum, too!

_Audreidi_: Oh, please share! About the insinuations, I mean. I hope I'm making them on purpose…or at least semi-consciously. It would be great to here your thoughts about some of the more detailed aspects, here. My email is stardust6120yahoo.com if you'd like to comment further and don't feel like doing it here. ****

**Chapter 3:**

Leia refrained from rubbing a hand across her eyes with considerable effort as she stepped out of the Conference room. '_Figure it out for yourself. Make the right decision.' Sure, Mon Mothma, no problem. I'll do just that_, she thought sarcastically to herself. She reflected semi-optimistically that the day (and week, for that matter) couldn't possibly get any worse than it already was.

Unfortunately, she was wrong. At that moment, Isolder, crown prince of Hapes and most eligible bachelor in the galaxy, stepped around the corner of the hallway, holding a large bouquet of N'srelli flowers, a species unique to Alderaan. She hadn't even known that they still existed. Some lucky girl had probably just been given some as a good-bye present before going off-world when Alderaan was destroyed, and had suddenly been the possessor of the sole remaining N'srelli seeds in the Universe. But Leia did not think of any of that at the moment. Instead, she concentrated on maneuvering her facial features into a happy, pleasant expression that betrayed none of her exhaustion or frustration.

"Leia," Isolder greeted her, bowing low over the hand she extended out of habit. She regretted it immediately when his warm lips brushed briefly against her skin, inflaming both the nerves at the spot they touched and the color of her cheeks.

"Your highness," she managed, "I was not expecting the pleasure of your presence today." _What a dumb sentence_, she frowned mentally, erasing any sign of displeasure before he rose completely.

"I'm sorry if I have caused any undue disruption in your schedule, Leia," he said in that low, melodic voice of his, "I wanted to bring you these. I thought they might remind you of your native Alderaan. A beautiful world, if I may say so. It is no wonder that it produced beautiful women such as yourself."

_I guess he doesn't know about my true parentage…not that I know any more about my mother than he does, but…I wonder if he would still say things like that if he knew about my father_. She found herself blushing again, anyway. It was pleasant to be flattered every once in a while. She accepted the flowers, nodding and trying to smile. _A few tears sprang unbidden to her eyes. Is this what Bail would want? Would he want me to make this decision- to lose Han but get so much for the New Republic in the process…provide for what's left of his people, so that they could rebuild their lives?_ She found herself unable to think about that and decided to concentrate on the moment instead.

"That is very kind of you, Your Highness. I am flattered and embarrassed by your compliments and your generosity," she told him, smoothing some semblance of her customary pleasant expression onto her face.

"I am glad my gift pleases you, Leia. Would it also please you to accompany me to lunch, by any chance? I understand how busy you must be, such an instrumental official in the New Republic, but even Councilors must enjoy a repast every once in a while. You might find that I am not such bad company for a short meal- I have become skilled at brief meals, the stars know my mother has made them a habit in our household." Leia found his hesitancy and almost-shyness charming and adorable, even though the cynic in her protested that they were most probably contrived- training to do such things seemed to be a staple among influential young suitors. _Han._ The name cut across all of her other thoughts. _Here I am, falling under this guys spell and I've only known him for two days…and Han is waiting for me at home. He'll kill me if I go out to lunch with his new rival- especially without warning him beforehand._

Isolder squeezed her hand warmly and she only just barely refrained from flinching; she hadn't even noticed he was still holding it. His eyes spoke of nothing but hope that she would grant him a few hours…

"I am sorry to say that I already have plans for the next few hours. But I would be glad to accompany you to dinner tonight. There is a very nice restaurant near-" she began, hoping she didn't sound as torn as she felt. _Responsibility…or my heart?_

"Do not trouble yourself with the details, my princess. Your idea sounds quite perfect. I will pick you up at your apartments tonight at 0600, then?" he said gallantly.

"That…that will be fine. I will look forward to that time, then," she nodded, her cheeks starting to flush red again in embarrassment at the awkwardness of her own speech, while her insides squirmed at his 'my princess'. _Since when does he have permission to get so possessive? And _w_here'd all that diplomatic training go…is this because I feel like I'm betraying Han?_

Isolder nodded, too, solemnly bending over her hand once more before he left. As she watched him go, she noticed the straightness of his back and the preciseness of his gait as he walked…he was most definitely a prince. His boots made satisfying tapping noises as he walked, and his clothes rustled fluidly as he rounded the corner and stepped out of her view. Leia sighed. He had everything one could want…so why did this feel so wrong?

She found out exactly why as she stepped into her apartment and found Han waiting, presumably to greet her with a hug or a kiss, like he usually did. He stepped towards her…and stopped, as he saw the flowers in her arms.

"Alderaanian N'srelli flowers?" he commented, "Somebody must be showing off. What is it, does one of your planets need some extra reinforcements or permission for some protective-tariff or something?" he asked, raising his eyebrows and moving to take them from her.

"Um, no, actually…" Leia began, not sure what to say.

"Here, I'll put 'em in some water for you," he said, "I thought these things were extinct…oh, well. Hey, I made us some lunch…the flowers I put on the table aren't nearly as big or expensive or rare, but the guy at the florist's in the lobby said they were the season's best-" his voice dropped off ominously, cutting his happy rambling short. Leia knew he had found the card attached to the bouquet.

"Oh. I see. Someone wants more than reinforcements and a tariff, huh?" he said quietly, "I thought you had a meeting with the council, not a date with that prince."

"Are you accusing me of lying to you, Han? Because that's ridiculous. You saw my messages for yourself. Are you going to suggest I doctored them so that it would look like I had a meeting so I could go clandestinely meet Isolder? I think you've been watching too many holo-vids recently, Han. He came by after the meeting to give me these flowers- it was a completely unsolicited action but very kind on his part, don't you think?" Leia retorted angrily. Why did Han always have to make things so difficult? She bit her lip. _I have to tell him about our date tonight _some_day…_

Han was silent, arranging the flowers in a vase. _Damn him. It would be so much easier if he'd just say something…_

"I don't keep things from you, Han. Want me to prove it? I'm meeting Isolder tonight at six, for dinner. He asked me right after he gave me the flowers," she said, her insides contorting with pain that mirrored what was in Han's eyes.

"That's fine," he said, putting the vase down, "that's really just fine. Because I had plans for dinner already, anyway. Actually, I have plans for right now. And since I don't seem to be a part of your plans, I'll see you later. Have a good time with Prince Charming."

He stormed out of the room at full speed, grabbing his vest on the way out. That was never a good sign. His vest contained the credit-chips he called his 'chance money,' his vibro-blade, his palm blaster…and not his com-link. When he went out with his vest, it usually meant he was planning to go to some seedy tap-café in a less-than-reputable part of the under-levels and get good and drunk over a game of sabacc. He always (or almost always) got home with minimal damage…but then, he almost always never left without at least a rough kiss to show that he wasn't permanently mad, that he'd be in a much better mood when he got home and woke up the next day.

Leia shook her head and blinked back the tears that threatened to fall, going over to the table where Han had carefully arranged a simple lunch for them. When she saw that he had cooked one of her favorite Corellian dishes (or, rather, one of the few that she could actually enjoy), traladon steaks with fresh vegetable sauce, the tears overflowed and rolled down her cheeks. At the center of the table was another, simpler vase, with Corellian Love Blossoms. On Corellia, you only gave Love Blossoms to someone you really and truly loved. Of course, off-world, the tradition was used much more loosely, but still…it was almost akin to being engaged, on Corellia. _For my girl_, the small card said, _enjoy_. Well, the lump in her throat and the tears clouding her eyes prevented her from enjoying any aspect of the meal, so she went to her bedroom and lay down for a short nap, instead.

Han Solo strode through the lower streets of Coruscant, angry with himself and with Leia, neither of which was a pleasant feeling. He'd stormed out of her apartment just over an hour ago and taken three different turbo-lifts downwards for a total of 57 levels below where he had been originally. Once there, he'd gone into the first decent-looking bar he saw, and was promptly assailed with an image of Leia and Isolder and on the newsvids playing in the corner. Partly because of the unpleasant content and partly because of the uncomfortable angle the holo-machine was placed at, he tried to avoid looking at it…but despite that, he kept being drawn to it anyway. Leia chatting with Isolder…Isolder giving her flowers- how had they gotten a vid of that already? When Isolder kissed her hand again, Han jumped up from his seat, refrained from shouting a stream of unsavory curses right then and there, tossed a few credits at the bartender and left, fuming. _That jerk has no right to Leia…I love her, she loves me, he doesn't belong in the picture. Leia just needs to figure that out, damn it._

Resolving to show Leia how much she meant to him, how much he was willing to sacrifice for her, he went up a considerable amount of levels- until he was back to a more civilized part of town, and looked around at the shops. _Well, flowers have already been covered. She's got more baubles from that moron than any girl could ever want. Artwork…I've already given her all the Alderaanian artwork I could lay my hands on. Food…furniture…clothes…she has all of that, damn it!_

Finally, he gave up, shaking his head, and decided that what Leia really needed at the moment was some kindness and sensitivity and understanding, no matter how angry and frustrated he was. He took another turbo-lift to go up the remaining levels between the shopping district and the residential area where Leia's apartment was.

It was 0400 by the time he arrived at her apartment, and it was silent. Peeking into her bedroom confirmed his suspicion that she was asleep. She looked so defenseless and vulnerable that he was tempted to put his arms around her and keep her safe from everything…but that would probably wake her up, so he went to her closet instead. He pulled out a very becoming dress (_at least she won't accuse me of trying to make her look bad so he won't like her…_) and laid it out on the dressing rack, trying to remember what shoes and jewelry she had worn with it the last time he had seen it on her. (_Oh, screw it, I'll make Threepio figure it out._) Next he drew a deep bath for her, with actual water, and dimmed the light a little. (_That'll be relaxing, she'll be in a better mood_.) And finally, he went to wake her.

After gently brushing her lips with his, he smoothed a few strands of hair off her face.

"Leia," he called softly, "sweetheart, it's 0430; you have a date with a prince in an hour and a half."

"Hm?" she murmured, turning her face to his and opening her eyes slowly, "oh, thanks, Han, I must have slept through the alarm" she said, raising an eyebrow that clearly said 'where'd your bad mood go?'

"I turned it off. This is a lot more fun, right?" he said, scooping her off the bed in one smooth motion and carrying her to the 'fresher, "I ran a bath for you."

"Oh, Han, that's so sweet of you. Thank you," she said again, giving him a peck on the cheek to show she was quite sincere and relaxing against his shoulder. _This is the Han I remember…_

An hour later, the Han she remembered was gone once more, and a very disappointed guy had taken his place. Her hair up, her make-up on, and her dress fitting her to perfection, Leia was standing, astounded, in front of an almost-pouting Han. Some part of him had been hoping that if he was supportive enough, Leia would just laugh and say, 'oh, Han, why don't we go out, just the two of us. It's been so long since we had a real date.' Unfortunately, a very irate Leia was standing in front of him saying, instead,

"But, Han, _obviously_ I have to go. Why do you think I got all dressed up in this blasted uncomfortable dress and shoved pins into my hair for an hour? And why else do you think I would have told him I'd be waiting here at 0600- so I could just politely shut the door in his face and say, 'oh, sorry, there's been a change in plans'? Come on, Han, think a little, here."

"I still don't see why you have to go anywhere with that bastard at all," Han practically whined. _Damn, I sound ridiculous. Why the hell did I ever come back here?_

"Han, I've told you a million times in the past ten minutes…oh, you know what? Never mind. I'm not going to get all upset about this right now. I don't have time to argue with you. We'll discuss it when I get home, if you really feel the need. I'm going to go wait in the lobby. At least that way I'll be sure you won't do anything embarrassing."

"Sure. Fine. But don't expect me to be here when you get home. I've had enough of this," Han fired back at her, turning on his heel to retrieve his vest from the main room. Leia resisted the urge to burst into tears and tapped the door-control. When it slid open, she left towards the turbo-lift, without looking back.

Isolder was already down in the lobby, seated gracefully in one of the chairs there, probably waiting until it was 0600 to go up to her apartment. _At least he doesn't mind waiting for me_, she thought sardonically.

"Leia!" he greeted her, jumping up with equal grace, "I hadn't expected you so early; forgive me for not being at your door on time." Leia tried not to cringe. Not many people called her Leia- Mon Mothma and Admiral Ackbar, most of the rest of the Inner Council, Han, what few close friends she had here on Coruscant- but most of them had earned the right to call her that in some way or another. Perhaps she had worked with them for years, like Mon Mothma and Ackbar. Perhaps she saw them every day, like the Council members. Perhaps they were even just good friends who had dispensed with formalities for the sake of convenience. Or they were…well…Han. In any case, no matter who they were, they had earned the right to call her by her first name; she had always felt uncomfortable when anyone else so casually used the name that was so private to her.

"Your highness," she returned the greeting, trying not to sound as cold as she felt towards him right then, "It's all right. I was ready early and thought that I might as well come wait for you down here to save you the trouble of going up."

"Call me Isolder," he said, smiling graciously at her and offering her his arm.

"Well, Isolder," Leia said as her diplomatic training came back to her, "what plans did you have for this evening?"

"How does the Coruscant Spire sound to you?"

"Just lovely."

And off they went into the spacious private speeder Isolder had waiting. Han watched from Leia's balcony above, for once thankful that it was a one-way view-port. You could see out, but you sure as heck couldn't see in- gods only knew he'd tried to see if Leia's light was on enough times. He let out a guttural growl, surprising himself with the intensity of his anger towards Isolder…and the desperation of his desire to hold Leia back from him.

_Enough of this. I gotta get out of here. And this time I sure as hell won't be waiting for her when she gets back like a regular housewife_. And with those thoughts firing his anger even more, he stomped out of the apartment, his vest swung casually over his shoulder. _And I'd better not meet any highfalutin senators in the turbo-lift, for their sake_.

A half-hour later, he was down even further than he had been that afternoon, with only one thought blaring through his head like a mantra: _gotta get Leia back from that bastard. Gotta get Leia back from that bastard_. He came upon what he was looking for- a sufficiently seamy tap-café that proclaimed from a multi-lingual neon sign that it had some 'rooms' in the basement. He glanced around to make sure no muggers were following him, and ducked in.

All five of his senses were immediately assaulted with the squalor of the place. The smell of crude alcohol and potent spice mixed with filth and the sweat of too many species to discern permeated the hazy air. Smoke and darkness stung his eyes so that he had to blink to keep them from tearing too much. A very drunk and very mediocre jizz band played half-heartedly in a corner. Two Devronians were having what resembled a fight but could just as well have been a marriage proposal at one of the tables. Han could hear at least twenty languages (and those were only the ones that he recognized) being spoken at various tables in the room. But the sound he was listening for came distinctly from the stairwell in the back of the room: the sound of sabacc droids dealing hands, gambling chips clinking on tables, and angry sentients arguing over their losses.

Han went up to the bar and figured he'd grab a drink or two before proceeding downstairs. He felt too uptight to play at the moment- you couldn't win if you didn't take chances and he certainly didn't feel up to taking any chances at the moment.

"Corellian whisky," he said, flipping a decicredit out of his pocket and onto the counter. The bartender took it, squinted at it, and put it through his casher, waiting for the warning light to come on. It didn't. Satisfied that it was real, he grunted and went to get Han's drink.

Two whiskies and an ale later, Han felt quite ready to take a few chances- and win them, at that. He ordered one more ale (you never knew when you might want to sip or spill your drink to stall while you thought things over) and indicated the stairs with his head before sliding off his barstool and going down.

The gaming room was even smellier and dirtier than the upstairs, if that was possible, but Han didn't mind too much- the three drinks he had already downed might have had something to do with it. He concentrated on looking around casually to see what his competition looked like. At one table, two angry Ithorians were, uncharacteristically enough for their species, shouting at each other with the strange acoustics of Ithorian voices. Han decided not to go for that table. After looking around just a little longer, he saw a table in the back that might suit him. A Chadra-fan appeared to be losing- he wouldn't provide too much competition. A Kubaz was buzzing at him, probably urging him to either fold or make a move. And a Selonian female was deep in thought. She might make the game at least interesting for him. _Don't get too cocky, Solo_, he cautioned himself, _been a while, what with all this general stuff… _

"Mind if I join ya'," he asked, sauntering casually over. The Kubaz made a buzzing sound and the Selonian purred something. The Chadra-fan nodded. And the translator droid in the center of the table spit out a "Fine" in its metallic voice.

"Thanks. What's the money looking like?"

All three players offered some information and Han waited patiently for the droid to translate, not letting on that he understood Selonian and some rudimentary Chadran. The Kubese was a lost cause, though. Apparently, they were betting a considerable sum of money, and the Kubaz was getting nervous about it. Something also seemed to be bothering the Chadra-Fan.

"Aren't you…aren't you…forgive me, but you bear an uncanny resemblance to the General Han Solo," it finally said in broken basic.

"'S that gonna be a problem?" Han answered with his own question.

"No, of course not," the Chadra-Fan gulped, its ears squirming. Han guessed that was his species way of indicating nervousness. It folded ten minutes later. _One down, two to go- must've had some Andris or some Glitterstim or some other none-too-legal stuff on him, _thought Han_. _The Kubaz was eyeing its cards with increasing anxiety as well. When the Selonian picked up a card and laid down an Idiot's Array, it blared an anguished syllable that made it's snout flare up before throwing it's cards down in anger and stomping away.

"Only you and self remaining, at this time," purred the Selonian in awkward but passable basic.

"That's right, buddy. I think this calls for a celebration. How 'bout I buy you a little drink and we raise the stakes a bit, eh?"

"Humorous, human, but you have not succeeded to trick self. I will refuse to become intoxicated and allow you to keep all of my funds," the Selonian responded, exposing her teeth in what Han assumed was the Selonian version of a grin.

"Okay, so I'll just have a drink and we'll raise the stakes anyway. Whaddaya say?" Han said. He took out a credit chip out of his hand, one with a considerable amount flashing on the indicator. The Selonian made a purring sound that Han took for a sigh.

"You push me to the limit of my funds, human, but your game intrigues me too much to end it now. Allow me a moment to contemplate what I have to match your offer." (_Translation: lemme think what I can possibly offer you in return 'cause I already spent all my money_, thought Han happily.)

"Ah. I have discovered the answer," the Selonian told him brightly after a moment, pulling something out of the side-pouch she was wearing, common enough among Selonians, although hers seemed to be made of green synth-leather, which was pretty pricey, these days. She pressed her thumb on a button on top of the thing, and a holo of a planet, twirling on its axis appeared in the air just above her hand.

"Holy…" Han breathed, "C'I see that for a sec?"

"Certainly, so long as you do not attempt to rob me of my possession," the Selonian agreed.

Han took the little black projector from his hand and pressed the button to make the planet appear again. Puzzled, he flipped it over. There was a screen on the other side, not unlike the indicator on a credit-chip, which proclaimed 'Dathomir'. When Han pushed the button to cycle the information displayed on the screen, a set of numbers appeared. His experienced pilot's eye recognized them as coordinates, indicating a location somewhere near the border between the Outer-rim and the Middle planets, more towards the Middle side. Cycling the information again brought up what he took to be the distance from Coruscant to the planet. And that was all the information the contraption contained. Han finally realized where he'd seen things like this before. The last time had been in the last Council meeting he'd attended with Leia before his mission: the planets whose system he'd just returned from had been petitioning to join the New Republic for a while, and Mon Mothma had just signed their membership. As a symbolic gesture, the Emissary from the planet had performed a brief ceremony during which he'd offered Mon Mothma the official deed to their planet for the Coruscant Archives to keep. And the deed had looked remarkably like this thing.

"You…you own this planet?" he asked in awe.

"That is correct," the Selonian answered, "Will it do, to compensate the large sum you have offered?"

"Yeah," Han said, trying to sound off-hand and calm, "ohh, yeah." It was only a few seconds later that he realized that winning this game and this planet might just solve all his problems: _Leia can stick her Alderaanians on this planet. Then she won't need Prince Charming's money. And then he can go back to his stupid planets and leave me and Leia alone!_ He almost laughed with the irony of it_. If I hadn't fought with her over that moron, I wouldn't have left and I wouldn't be here, solving our problems! _He sobered himself a moment later_: get a grip and concentrate, Solo. You ain't won the game yet!_

The next few hands were unimportant and unexciting, but as Han's turn came around again, he noticed something crucial. The Selonian, unaware that Han could understand her native tongue, was talking to herself! Han casually hunched forward as far as he could without alarming the droid or arousing the Selonian's suspicions, pretending to study his cards. He could just about make out what she was saying.

"Nine and seven is sixteen, and one is seventeen. Half of the number cards I could acquire are below five, which would be safe, the other half are above, which would not…and a five exactly would give me twenty three…pure sabacc! What to do? What to do? Oh, may Selon grant me luck, I shall choose another card if the human does nothing drastic now!"

That muttered monologue being over, Han began to study his cards in earnest. He had close to an Idiot's Array. But if the card values suddenly changed to a Setting Three, which they were bound to do sooner or later…he'd end up with a total of negative twenty, putting him in an even riskier position than the Selonian. Beginning to sweat, he decided to take another card, hoping it was the one he needed to complete his hand. It was! Now if only the droid would wait just until after the Selonian's turn to change the Setting so he could put down his cards and declare himself the winner!

The Selonian's tail began writhing behind her, indicating her high stress level. Just as she chose a card and a triumphant grin spread across her face as she reveled in the fact that she had chosen a five, the droid beeped, changing the values of all the cards. With an enraged cry, she slumped back down in her seat, angry, but not ready to admit defeat yet. She now had a total of negative six, not close to anything. Han couldn't tell whether to be pleased or disappointed. _I was so close…but she'd obviously just got pure sabacc, so that wouldn't've been good either.  But, damn, so close and now I ain't got squat…hey, wait a sec_, he interrupted his own thoughts, _those are Setting Two values, not Setting Three! This thing ain't on a fixed schedule- it's a randomized randomizer! I've got pure sabacc! I won!_

The Selonian all but roared when he jubilantly laid his hand out on the table, but she accepted her defeat gratefully and even thanked him for the entertaining game before going up to get drunk enough to forget her loss with the few decicreds she had left. Han, on the other hand, strode contentedly out of the bar, flashing a grin at the bartender, and took the most direct route back to Leia's apartment building, reflecting that this really wasn't the night to take chances with muggers. Upon arriving at Leia's building, he decided that he would wait for tomorrow to present this to her. He wanted to do it right, not looking grungy and smelling like filth and alcohol, as he was now. Not to mention that, now that his temporary 'high' from winning such a valuable game had subsided, he was feeling more than a little drunk. He left the lobby, earning a few confused looks from the few sentients on the night staff, who mostly knew him pretty well. Glancing around outside, he decided on a fairly reasonable but very comfortable and even mildly classy hotel on the other side of the Square.

As he settled into his bed with a gourmet dinner and a smashball game on the newsvids, after having taken a luxuriously hot and genuine shower, he decided that just maybe his luck was changing…for the better.

Meanwhile, Leia was deciding exactly the opposite for herself. Her meal with Isolder had been uneventful and full of amusing anecdotes and flattery on both sides. The food itself, of course, had been delicious and the ridiculously expensive Ithorian nectar-wine had been exquisite. And yet, though Leia refused to admit it to herself, this lavish dinner just couldn't compare with some of the quiet evenings she remembered spending with Han…or Luke…or even Bail Organa and his diplomat friends (at least she'd always had Winter to talk to, then).

"You seem far away, Leia," Isolder broke through her thoughts as the waiter droid cleared away their plates.

"I'm sorry," she began to apologize, but he interrupted her.

"It's all right. I, too, find it hard to concentrate here, especially with you across from me. You are beautiful, Leia," he said earnestly, "I'm sure you have been told so every moment of your entire life, but I must add my voice to the clamor. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on. Your hair, your eyes, your lips…everything about you is perfect in my eyes. I must tell you something, be honest with you. Although we both know that our marriage, if you agree to wed me, would be largely a political one, I must tell you that I feel I would come to love you very soon. Your beauty and your wit and kindness all feed my adoration for you every day…"

"Please," Leia finally cried, tears springing to her eyes, "please stop. I'm sorry. Your eloquence is touching, Isolder, but…I'm sorry. I can't listen to this in good conscience right now."

"You speak of General Solo," Isolder said, a slight stoniness creeping into his voice, "it's all right, my princess. I don't mind. I will wait as long as I need you- as long as you need to, to be ready. May I say, however, that you are worth so much more than he can ever give you?"

The tears wouldn't stop coming, though. Leia wiped them silently away during the entire ride home, until Isolder joined her and caught each one on a smooth, perfectly manicured finger as it fell. When they arrived at the door of her apartment, he kissed the last two away before Leia could stop him, and he finally pressed his lips, salty with her tears, gently to her own.

"I wish you a better night than the evening I have given you," he whispered as he released her and looked into her eyes once more before turning to go.

_It's not the evening you gave me that was a problem_, thought Leia ruefully, _but the confused heart inside the one you brought to share it with you_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Notes**: Well, they're at the bottom this time. Most of the notes, I mean. Enjoy!

_Pitdroid_: I know what you mean. I always just kind of want to smack Leia and then sort of shove some reason into her head…and I'm writing it. So much for me being in charge. These characters just sort of do their own thing, you know, and I just sort of describe it as it happens! Anyway, I figured the gooey politeness of Isolder and the hot-headed-ness from Han would help it make more sense that Leia is hesitating- not too much as a really big factor, but at least as a small thing that represents how tough her choice is. At least, tough when you take into account the outside world…

_Sue_: Well, it would be cheating if I told you who Leia ended up with, but…well…never mind. I'll be good and not say anything more.

_Audreidi_: Han kidnapping Isolder does have a certain appeal to it, but I've already written past where that is a possibility. Unfortunate. I could get great satisfaction out of having Han completely demolish Isolder in a fistfight or something…

_Stormygurlz_: Oh, I'm glad you thought Isolder's eloquence was effective! That's exactly where I was trying to go with it. And as for Han getting Leia to Dathomir…well, all I'll say about that is that I think it portrays their relationship a little better than that whole gun thing.

**Chapter 4:**

Han's last thoughts upon falling asleep had been a reflection of his present state of mind. No matter how relaxing his bath had been, how delicious his dinner, how exciting the smashball game he'd watched while eating, how comfortable the bed, and how satisfying his evening of gambling, none of it had really helped. _First girl I've ever met that I couldn't get over with a few ales and some sabacc…that ought to mean **something**!_

His first thought upon waking up was: _gambling didn't help…but this blasted planet just might…_

Leia's first thoughts upon waking had been considerably less optimistic, as the recollection that she had another council meeting that morning assaulted her memory. She sighed as she began her morning routine: get out of bed, gulp down a nutri-drink, endure a sonic shower (not enough time to waste real water on), wish for Alderaan's abundant water supply, brush her hair, put it up (stabbing pins in her hands when in a hurry), dress, glance in the mirror, and rush out of the apartment towards the turbo-lift. Han hadn't come back last night. Not that it came as a surprise, but she still had to suppress the waves of worry and regret that rose sneakily in her chest and threatened to choke her. If anything had happened to him…but it hadn't. Of course it hadn't. Nothing ever happened to Han. It couldn't. But she did acknowledge that the only thing that ever made the monotony of her mornings worthwhile was his presence…or at least the anticipation of it. And now she didn't even have that. Her worry turned to anger. _How dare he make me worry like this? He knows I have enough to worry about as it is!_

Her thought was interrupted by Threepio walking into the room.

"Your highness, there is someone at the door," he announced, reminding Leia that she'd had the door's sound mechanism turned off last night, "what shall I tell him?"

Leia recalled at that moment that Isolder had mentioned walking her to Council meetings, an economical way to spend time together, in view of her busy schedule. _Yeah, schedule that I've been ignoring. And for who? For Han._ Annoyance threatened to rise again, but she took a deep breath to fight it back down, calming herself as best she could before proceeding to the door.

"Good morning," Isolder greeted her as she stepped out of the apartment with her datapad carrier slung over her shoulder.

"Let's make a trade," he said, handing her a bouquet of deep blue flowers interrupted every once in a while with smaller yellow flowers. In exchange, he reached for her carrier.

"Those are Hapan apology flower," he offered when Leia looked at him with an unreadable expression in her eyes.

"We give them when we want to apologize to someone. The blue represents our regret and sadness at having hurt someone. The yellow expresses our hope that the wrong can be righted and the relationship salvaged," he finished, taking a deep breath at the end. For a prince, he seemed awfully nervous. Could it be that a prince of somewhere as prestigious as Hapes was actually allowing emotion to show? Or was it all a charade? Leia had always thought that she was a better-than-average judge of character and sincerity, a side effect, no doubt, of her early and continuous exposure to politics. And he seemed sincere…which made it all the worse. _If you let yourself start to like him, there won't be any reason to hold onto Han_…but she blocked that thought.

"I know what Hapan apology flowers are," she said, her tone coming off as more icy than she meant it to.

"I thank you," she amended more gently, "they're beautiful." She wondered if she should go back into her apartment and put them in some water. But she really didn't want to take the chance that someone would see her with Isolder, going into her apartment. And she was already running late as it was. She switched them from one arm to the other, and tucked her newly freed arm into Isolder's, as was becoming their habit. She'd just have to put them somewhere in her office…

"I'm honored that you know of our traditions. So you must know that it is customary to put a card on them explaining what we are sorry about. I suppose it comes from the Hapan pride- too proud to apologize in person. But I decided that I owed you a real apology. I wanted to tell you that I was sorry I kissed you like that last night; I should have asked you first. But then I realized that I wasn't really sorry that I had kissed you- I have never felt anything so perfect as kissing you- but that I had done it without your permission and possibly offended you in the process. So I beg your forgiveness for that and I promise that I will ask permission, the next time I feel inclined to kiss you," Isolder said quietly. Leia didn't know what to say, so she was silent until they arrived at her office.

When they got there, after a quick and uneventful speeder-ride, she realized that she had made a stupid error. Her office was on a far busier corridor than her apartment, and she was going to be seen with Isolder anyway. She shook her head, annoyed at herself. The media's camera crews were already in view.

Han tugged at his collar nervously, wishing he hadn't worn it. He was uncomfortable enough with the situation without his clothes adding to the problem. He was sitting in the waiting room of Leia's building, something he'd never tried before. Usually, he just went up and waited in her apartment. But, he'd discovered, the more genteel unexpected guests had the habit of waiting in the waiting room until their host returned, and then waiting another half hour or so before going up to visit. _If polite and gallant and all that crap she gets from _him_ is what she wants, that's what she'll get! _

Leia's building was a fairly fancy one, and their 'waiting room' was decorated accordingly. In some places, the lobby had a few chairs that people could wait in, but here there was a separate room with its own bar and several holo-screens, all displaying the news channel. He finally seated himself on one of the luxurious sofas and turned his attention to the news, hoping to pass the time until one of the specially programmed droids would alert him that Leia had returned. He was immediately sorry.

Instead of covering a local smashball game or something equally pleasant, the news had picked that particular hour (when all of the gossiping old sentients with nothing better to do would be watching) to update with the latest information on what they had begun to call 'The Courtship of Princess Organa.' Han restrained an annoyed growl as Leia ambled down the hall arm in arm with the Prince. He was carrying her carrier, she was carrying a large bouquet of showy flowers, and their heads were bent together. It appeared that she was listening as he whispered something. When they arrived at her door, the Prince graciously held the flowers as well while Leia allowed the lock to scan her palm. They went in together. Han gripped the arms of his chair to keep from jumping out of it. When they appeared again at the door, Isolder bowed low over her hand and kissed it chivalrously before sauntering down the corridor away from the camera. Leia, seeming to notice the cameras, graced them with a smile and waved cheerfully in their direction before retreating into her office. Han did his best not to be sick.

When the droid finally gave him the signal that Leia had returned, he jumped up and ran to the turbo-lift, hoping that he had timed it right. He had.

The door of the turbo-lift appeared to reveal Leia and Isolder, arm-in-arm once again.

"Well, hello!" he exclaimed in a mock-jovial voice, gritting his teeth together in an exaggerated smile, "fancy finding you here, Prince, ah, what was your name again?"

"Isolder of Hapes," Isolder told him, flashing a taut smile that clearly said 'who is this peasant jerk?' in Han's direction, "and to what do I owe your pleasant, ah, interruption?"

"Oh, interrupting, am I? Well, gee, that's too bad. I don't know if you know who I am- I doubt you would, coming from that backwards system of yours, and all- but around here I'm known as General or Captain Solo, depending on who you talk to. And when you're in my presence, it's usually polite to let go of my girlfriend's arm and at least pretend you're not trying to, shall we say, seduce her, okay?" he said in a voice that bordered on sounding manic.

"That being said," he continued, turning to Leia "how was your day, sweetheart? Was it stressful? You're usually stressed when you get home from work. Let's see, now, what do we usually do for that? Well, here, may I?" he carefully slid himself behind Leia, "Let me just see if we can't loosen you up a bit."

He began to massage her shoulders roughly, not noticing that he was taking out his anger and pain on her back, "see, being the Princess's lover, it's usually my job to take care of her after work. You know, give her a little backrub, like so, and make some dinner and stuff like that…be a nice guy in general, you know? But, obviously, being a nice guy isn't really your specialty, so if you'd just…"

"Um, I think I'm good now, Han," Leia muttered, trying to fake a smile, "anyway, this is our stop. Thank you for the lovely walk home, Isolder. I will see you…um, later. Han, uh…" Han got off with her and flashed Isolder another exaggerated smile as the door closed, separating them.

Leia pivoted on her heel and stalked down the corridor to her apartment, with Han close behind her, both of them fuming.

She should have shut the door on him right there and then. She knew it. Let them both cool down a bit, come back and discuss it tomorrow. But, of course, she didn't. Too eager to vent her anger on him, she ushered him into the apartment, her mouth set in a furious line, and slapped the door switch violently. She waited precisely the five and a half seconds it took to close before whirling to face him,

"What is your _problem_? What _was_ that, Han? Were you returning to your toddler years or something? That was _ridiculous_! Can you _imagine_ what the media will do to us if they happened to get that? Gods, Han, I thought even _you_ couldn't be that…that _juvenile_!" she said, packing as much fury and anger into her words as possible. Han was not in a listening mood.

"Oh, yeah. So cuddling with Prince Perfect in public is just fine, especially when you're already seeing someone else, may I remind you! But when I show up to try to defend myself- oh, no, that's just not allowed!" Han retorted, his words bathed in sarcasm.

"You know what, Han? We don't always get what we want. Just because the person you're seeing happens to have contact with another male sentient doesn't mean you can go rampaging all over the place for all the galaxy to see!"

Han uttered a cry of rage and frustration, not finding any words sufficient to convey his feelings. Leia stood on the balls of her feet, leaning forward, counting the seconds until it was safe to assume that Han had run out of things to say and had to admit defeat. She was completely surprised by his next outburst.

"Gods, Leia, what's happening here? What's happening to us, to you?" he finally asked in a tortured voice. Leia rocked back to her heels, so completely devoid of any answer that she allowed him to continue.

"I don't get it. We love each other. We both know it. I just don't see how you can throw that away for some money, Leia. We're not talking renewable resources, here. This is love we're talking about. How often do you find what we have together?" he continued. If she hadn't been so angry, Leia might have enjoyed one of the few moments she'd ever experienced when Han had opened himself completely to her. _He must really be desperate…_ But she was too far gone to stop now.

"Han…we can't always have what we want. I…I _do_ love you. You know that. But…I'm sorry, Han. I've messed up too many times before. I can't fail the people who're counting on me again. Sometimes you have to sacrifice for your duty, Han, and right now it's my duty to do whatever I can to make sure this baby government we've got here grows up healthy and strong," she finally said, not able to meet his eyes. Her emotions jerked around brutally inside of her, resisting her own words. She continued anyway, "I mean, can you imagine what would've happened to the rebellion if we'd all been selfish. Like if you'd left? See, you do it, too. You didn't leave the rebellion; you stuck with it, to the point where it almost got you killed. Well, I have to stick with it now. I have to protect what I know is right. Can you imagine all the things that would've happened if we all hadn't then? If I hadn't?"

_She's missing the point, damn it, this _is_ what's right!_ Han's thoughts were fiery and blazed red in his mind, _how can she be so blind?_ His frustration welled up inside him in a huge wave, overwhelming his brain and any sensible thoughts it might contain before exploding out in his words.

"What _would've_ happened? Your gods-damned planet blew up, Leia! What more could've gone wrong?" he shouted at her. Immediately, as he had known it would, icy regret gripped his heart and his eyes opened wide. All color had drained from Leia's face; her expression was as stony as he'd ever seen it.

"I'm sorry. Leia, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean that; I would never say anything like that in my right mind. I didn't mean it," he babbled almost as immediately. Leia stared down at her hands, any evidence of rational thought having left her face.

"I know," she finally said, "but you did say it. Get out."

"Leia, please," he all but begged, "this is ridiculous. It's not the point. The point is that I love you, and we belong together, no matter what it means for the universe. Leia, I never believed in love before I met you. But I've learned a few things since then. And one of them is that when you have something like this…you don't just throw it away, no matter what it costs."

Leia didn't move. And so he stalked out, not looking back. He didn't want to see the tears that he knew would be on her face; knowing that she wasn't his to comfort anymore would have been too much. And he no longer had the right to let her see his tears, either.

**Author's Notes**: I'm especially concerned with your thoughts on this chapter. I think I'm best at writing plain descriptive stuff with lots of flowery language and such. Dialogue and drama are really not my forte, but I'm working on it. So I'd really like to know what you thought of the argument scene. I was going for emotional but realistically so…but then again, it may have come off as contrived and melodramatic. Your opinions would be greatly appreciated!


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Notes:** Thanks for the reviews of the last chapter, everyone. I found them especially helpful because of my doubt as to that chapter's quality. I have a similar question about this one, but I'll put it at the end so as not to mess up your perspective or anything.

_Pitdroid_: I'm glad you think that the tone of the argument was appropriate! And about the end of the chapter…well, hang in there! That's all I'll say about that.

_Princess Daisy_: Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel, too. If I just had them get to together within the first chapter and make it all happily ever after, I wouldn't really have much of a story left, though. Anyway, I'm glad the chapter made you feel something about it!

_Stormygurlz_: Like I said to Princess Daisy, I'm glad the chapter made you feel something! And as for Han's lines, well, I sure enjoy writing them!

_Liz_: I know what you mean. But, again, I'm really glad that you have an opinion as to the situation in the story, because that has to be a good thing, right?

_Mara look-a-like_: Well, I know what you mean about Han and Leia being together, but I can't really say anything comforting (or not) without giving away the end of the story. May I suggest that you continue reading, though? Maybe that will help…

_Clare_: Thank you! I'm very glad you thought it was believable. I was really afraid it was starting to sound like some cheap soap opera…

**Chapter 5:**

Luke Skywalker stared at his holo-messenger's message display, trying to gather the bits and pieces of his wandering mind enough to process the information he saw there. The first message was from his sister. _Bet I know what it says, too_, he thought. Leia's messages always ran along the lines of '_I miss you. I'm worried about you. You should come visit us more often so that I would know you've had a proper meal. You need to stop moping around. Come visit soon. Love, Leia_.'

He tapped the message's title on the screen to open it, just as a formality. And he was rather surprised to find that it had absolutely nothing to do with his lack of nutrition and proper sleep. Actually, for once, it asked for help instead of offering it. '_Hey, little brother. I need your help with something. Watched the HoloNet lately? Please come visit. I'll get Threepio to make you some Tatooinian specialties…if Tatooine even has specialties. See you soon, I hope. Love, Leia_.' Well, the problem couldn't be too dire, could it? She had retained her sense of humor…but then again, he thought, he was dealing with Leia. He wasn't likely to find a tear-stained note from her anytime soon. Shrugging, he classified it as 'deal with it later' in his mind, and tapped the screen in the bottom right corner to move onto the next message.

This one required even more thought. (_What is this, 'kill off Skywalker's brain cells' day?_ He wondered in annoyance.) The problem with this message was that it was written in another language. Having grown up on a backwater planet with a pair of moisture farmers, the only languages he spoke were Basic, Basic with slang, and some rudimentary bocce. This one didn't qualify as any of those. He squinted at the 'origin' box, trying to figure out how to pronounce the name it contained. Well, he'd never heard of it, in any case. Almost gleefully, he marked that one as 'let someone else deal with it' and tapped the 'next' button again.

It was a repeat of the same message. Only this time, it had a holo-projection attached. Figuring it was probably in the same indecipherable language and it might just be one of those one-view only things that some people sent just to piss you off, he decided that he'd better wait until he could get a recording device for it and maybe enlist Threepio's help.

The next five messages were advertisements for various things (the latest speeder model, a vibro-blade that could be concealed under one's skin, permanent make-up that was nevertheless removable, an new kind of auto-chef at a one-time only reduced price that happened to serve only Crustinian specialties, whatever that was, and finally an ad for the latest credit-bond drive that the New Republic was holding).

The last message was apparently addressed to someone named Luk (no last name) and had been sent to him by mistake. He deleted the last six, looked at Leia's one more time before replying that he'd be over to see her…soon, deleted it, too, and put the datapad on stand-by. He'd take care of those other two later. And he'd go see Leia tomorrow…or the next day. For now, he needed to meditate. Some more. He lowered himself cross-legged to the floor of the Coruscant apartment Leia had procured for him. She'd insisted that he take it; she'd gotten her choice of a complimentary apartment near the Imperial Palace, where the Council was temporarily meeting in the old Imperial Council of Moffs, and given it to Luke. She already had her own apartment in the old Alderaanian sector of Coruscant…at least, it had been the Alderaanian sector until the Empire had dissolved the Senate and all sane Alderaanians had decided it was a good time for a vacation.

No sooner had he brought his stress-level down a few notches (_why am I always stressed these days? I don't even have something concrete to be stressed about…just wisps of nothing…but maybe that's the worst kind…oh, enough philosophizing, Skywalker_) than the messenger pinged to let him know he had a new message. Sighing, he got up reluctantly and went over to turn the screen back on. It was from Leia. Go figure. He squinted, scrolling down, and blinked his eyes. Maybe he'd been wrong about the whole 'tear-stained note' thing.

'_Hi, Luke_,' it read, '_please come over as soon as possible. I'm even going to go so far as to admit that I need not only your help and advice, but maybe some Jedi-type help, too. Love always, Leia_.'

Luke couldn't decide whether to be happy or annoyed. He leaned towards annoyed for a moment: now that she had gone and admitted that she needed help every once in a while (something he'd been urging her to do as a step towards acknowledging that the Force was a good ally to have), he figured he ought to reciprocate by visiting her as soon as he could, which he really didn't feel like doing. He was making so little progress in finding his true purpose and proper course of action as the last Jedi; he really didn't want to go have to deal with his sister's success right then. Although, it sounded like she had some sort of horrible problem she needed help with. _Yeah, like what flower arrangement to…oh, shut up, Luke! Just because she knows what she's doing and you don't doesn't mean you can…oh, never mind. But still, _he thought defensively_, being a politician is at least following some sort of mold. Being the last Jedi…or first is just…but then, she's one of the first leaders of a brand new government…she still has _something_ to follow, though…oh, whatever. How in the name of Tatooine's two suns does she expect me to help her straighten out her problems when I can't even figure out what mine are, let alone fix them!_ But then again, how often did Leia ask for help and admit that she could use the Force's help in her daily life? Not often. Better to take advantage of it while he could.

Leia blew a thin stream of air through her lips, collapsing back in her chair. _Should I have done that? Am I really so desperate that I need to go running to my big brother? Or little brother…whichever._ Part of her wanted to fix this whole thing up as soon as possible, have it over with, have things the way they used to be again. The rest of her, however, was itching to send Luke another message: '_everything's okay. False alarm. No big deal._' After all, that would have been easier than dealing with the truth. How had things gotten so bad? How had she gone from looking forward to Han's arrival to dreading the next time she would see him, all in less than a week? _Although, I wasn't always looking forward to that day his mission got home. I was scared, too, remember? Psychic. I bet that's what it was- my subconscious was warning me that this wouldn't be a good thing. Or maybe it was the Force…oh, stars, I guess I do need Luke after all…_

She got up and wandered restlessly around her apartment, the events since her last encounter with Han floating aimlessly through her head.

Last night, she'd been numb for hours, trying to think through what had occurred between her and Han. How could he ever have said something like that? He'd never deliberately hurt her before, not really. Sure, they'd had their share of arguments- even more, maybe. But the subject of Alderaan, used like that, had always been completely taboo, out-of-bounds-against-the-rules-not-allowed. He'd never used her past to hurt her, just like she'd never brought up his past activities to hurt him, except in a teasing sort of way…

Of course, I did make him pretty mad. Bail always said to see everything through everyone's eyes before making a decision.  From his point of view, I guess everything seems clear: we love each other, therefore we have the right to be together, no matter what it costs everything else, even the causes we believe in. Little more complicated from my point of view…

The Council meeting that morning had just about resolved that point of view for her. Marrying Isolder would bring all the wealth of Hapes into the New Republic. The New Republic could then thrive, eradicating the Imperial remnants and bringing peace and harmony back to the galaxy. On a more personal scale, funds could be directed straight to the Alderaanian refugees. They could find a planet, rebuild their cities, their farms, their industries, their arts…and their lives.

Not to mention the fact that I could rebuild my life. Queen Mother of Hapes…that's not so different than Vicereine of Alderaan would've been. I would've ended up marrying some dignitary or other…having well-bred children just like me…making sure everything was just the way it was supposed to be. Isolder will give me back those dreams, that future.

She didn't admit that those had never really been dreams, just obligations. As the Council had slowly convinced her of these many things, her mind numbly agreeing, any dreams of a true prince of a different kind whisking her off in his ship and showing her true love and happily-ever-after faded away.

Leia shook her head, her thoughts coming back to the present. Almost all thoughts of real love and happily ever after had been banished from her mind, until a bit of flimsiplast caught her eye. She strode over to where it rested on the table, under the wilting bouquet Han had left her on the table on that seemingly long ago day when he had prepared the lunch they'd never eaten. Her hands shook when she recognized Han's scrawling hand, and tears came unexpected to her eyes when she saw the words.

_Leia,_

_I know you're mad at me, and you have every right to hate me right now. I also know that I love you, and that you used to love me, at least. And I know we belong together. Unfortunately, I know I've hurt you more than I ever had any right or intention of doing, and I'm sorry, more than I can put into words. Anyway, I still think we belong together, and I'm off to prove that to you somehow- in your own words: no matter what the cost. _

_Yours, _

_Han_

The door alarm chose that minute to announce a visitor with its melodic but repetitious signal. Leia dabbed gently at her eyes with cold hands, hoping to minimize any redness that might have resulted from her sudden tears.

"Master Luke," announced Threepio grandiosely. She nodded for Threepio to show him in, and tried one more time to make her eyes look normal. She needn't have bothered.

Luke ambled in and looked at her for a moment.

"Been crying?" he asked politely. A mild annoyance rose up and Leia shoved it back down. _This is Luke, you idiot, and what's more, _you_ asked him to come!_

"Very discreet," she pointed out, "but…yes. Does it show that much?" Luke blushed faintly.

"Sorry," he apologized before answering her question, "nope, you look fine."

"Ah. The Force, then. Then I'm sure you can figure out what the problem is. Watched the 'Net at all lately?" she asked, shoving down her irritation that he could read her so easily along with her annoyance that he had said it out loud.

Luke shook his head, "too busy."

"Oh. Well, I guess you'd better, then. I'll have Isa get the recordings for the past few days from the archives. We keep archives of all of the media stuff that goes out so we have it to refer to if we ever need. I can't imagine why we'd ever need it in an official capacity, but…the nice thing is that, as a Councilor, I can borrow a copy of whatever any time I want to-" she noticed that she was babbling around the same time that Luke interrupted her.

"Leia. Are you going to tell me what's wrong?" he asked gently. Leia nodded, but didn't have the energy to fake a smile, even an apologetic one.

"Right. It's a bit of a long story. Want to sit down?" Not even a crisis of this magnitude could completely immobilize her diplomatic/hostess skills. Then again, she hadn't really admitted it to be a crisis yet. _But that's what Luke's here for…_and she poured out the whole story, beginning when Mon Mothma had told her that she'd have to reception the Hapan Prince and finishing with:

"Oh, and Han left me a note saying pretty much the same thing as before. Only now he's gone off to 'prove' it or something," she said, taking a few violent swipes at her traitorous eyes, which were threatening to overflow again. Luke let out a low whistle.

"Wow. That's…wow, that's a hard one," he offered, trying to make some sense of what Leia had just told him. He looked at her quickly.

"Give me a minute. I can't solve your problem or anything, Leia- obviously only you can do that. But I can give you my opinion…once I've figured it out. Hold on a minute."

Leia nodded, "I'll go get some water, okay?"

Luke nodded absently, and she rose to disappear tactfully into the kitchen.

Luke settled back into the self-conforming chair she'd seated him in and stared blankly at the wall. _Okay. Obviously, she and Han love each other. You'd think that in a galaxy with so much violence and badness and evil where real love is so rare that having love would automatically make it right to go with that love…but then, maybe the whole 'greatest good for the greatest number' thing comes in here. Being with Han would make her and Han happy…but being with Isolder would make him and a _lot_ of other people happy. Damn. This is tough_. He sighed. _I guess it would be the right thing…no, maybe not. We still haven't figured out whether their love or her duty is the right thing. Well, I guess I know that it would probably be the _dutiful_ thing to do, marrying Isolder. But I still wish she could be happy…_

Leia reentered with two glasses of clear water.

"You know, Leia, I still can't see a clear path. Not from my point of view. But I'm sure there is one somewhere. I can't find it for you, though. I think you have to find it for yourself," he paused to look her square in the eyes. Her eyes were already icing over with the thought that he wasn't going to help her either.

"But I can help you find it…and so can the Force."

A small smile crept onto her face, like the first Criss flowers of spring. He hoped he could keep it there.

**Additional Author's Notes:** So my question is about Luke. I know that overall my writing of characters can't be that good, since I'm only an amateur, but I always feel that writing Luke is especially hard, for some reason. I don't feel that I really have a good grip on his personality, especially post-ROTJ. So how did you feel about him in this chapter? Any suggestions to make? On a side note, I'm going to be away until early August and won't have access to a computer during that time, so no updates until then. Sorry! I really hate putting in that sort of temporary note that will soon be irrelevant, but I didn't want you to think I'd abandoned the story or anything!


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Notes:** As always, thank you so much for your comments, everyone. You have no idea how encouraging it is to see people taking interest- especially enough to take the time to give feedback. It is much appreciated. Also, again something that will become quickly outdated: thank you for your patience. I'm back now! Answers to comments:

_Ann:_ Aha! A very helpful comment. I'm glad you shared that opinion with me. I see what you mean about Luke being more decisive (I just watched ROTJ again recently). Here's what my original reasoning was: Luke is at a point in his life where I think he's trying to figure out his purpose as the last Jedi of the old Order (or the first of the New, as the almost cliché phrasing of the EU goes) as is evidenced in several of the EU novels around this time period. So he sort of subconsciously brings that conflict to his thoughts about Leia's dilemma, making him unsure of the path she should take: personal happiness/truth to self, or "greatest good for the greatest number," similar to what is going on with his own life at the moment. So that's why I wrote him as somewhat indecisive. I realize that I went a little strong on the wishy-washy-ness in his inner thoughts though. I'll work on that…

_Stormygurlz:_ Good point about the Luke/Leia relationship. What I was trying to portray was how Luke was stuck between the two aspects of the problem, like I mentioned in my response to Ann, above, but I think I got it mixed up with his relationship with Leia. Being that I've never been in this sort of situation, I think I'm going to have to work on imagining it some more. You're definitely right that they should be very close- I'll put more effort into writing them that way in future chapters.

_Audreidi_: Heehee…you're right. Having Han kidnap Isolder could've been immensely entertaining. That could make for an extremely amusing AU. I'm glad that's how Luke came off as to you (previously simple minded and fitting into big shoes), because that's exactly what I want him to be like- so that he brings his overall confusion into everything he does. Although that may or may not be the right way to think about it…I'll ponder that some more. As for Han…well, juvenile rage was what I was going for, so at least it came out like I intended. As to whether it was right for the situation…eh, that's a whole different story. I kind of wanted him to be so amazingly angry at Leia's seeming thickheaded-ness that he sort of lost all logic/sense/sanity and went completely nuts. (You know how he goes into almost-juvenile moments like "it's not my fault!" and stuff like that? With really impressive sarcasm and such? Yeah…that's what I wanted. Obviously, I can't compare to the great George Lucas who wrote him originally, though.) I don't know that I want him being stoic about the possibility of losing Leia, though…I had him playing the angry, cold-shoulder, "Just fine, see if I care," type with the whole storming out thing a few chapters ago, so I wanted to show how his upset-ness had escalated.

_Clare:_ Why, thank you! I think he may still need tweaking though. But I'm glad you think I'm on the right track!

_Pitdroid:_ Thank you very much! I'm glad you think so.

_Koolgirl1808:_ Well, here it is; enjoy!

_Sweetdeath04:_ Thanks! I sure will.

_Mara look-a-like:_ Yeah, I completely agree about Luke being hard to figure out. It might just be me, but I see him as slightly more closed off from the rest of his peers and also from the audience in the movies, which makes it hard to get into his head and see what he's thinking. Could just be me, though.

_Princess-Kinky:_ (SPOILER WARNING) Now, how do you know there's going to be a wedding? Just teasing. Well, I'll do my best!

_Ann:_ Sorry for the delay! Just got back the day before yesterday! And I think I addressed the rest of your comment up in my first response… J

**Chapter 6:**

Han dozed fitfully in his pilot's chair, his feet propped up on the control board and his mind filled with images of Leia and Isolder: holding hands, kissing, exchanging flowers…exchanging vows. He jerked awake, smashing his head against something hanging down from the ceiling (something that probably should have been better attached) and the sound of an alarm filled his head. So it wasn't the dream that had awoken him. Something was actually wrong. (Not that there wasn't something wrong with Leia kissing Isolder, but maybe this was a situation he could actually _do_ something about.)

He glanced rapidly over the control panel and the display screens that filled the cockpit. He uttered a few choice curses in guttural Corellian as he realized he'd been pulled out of hyperspace. Not a good thing at all. His right hand covering the controls familiarly and his left hand flipping switches rapidly, he tried to bring the ship under some measure of control…and fervently wished he'd brought Chewie along after all. Not that Chewie would have agreed to come with him. Heck, he probably wouldn't even have let _Han_ go.

"_What do you think you're going to do once you get there? What are you going to accomplish by making this trip to some strange planet? What are you going to prove?_" he'd have asked, pointing out all of the weak logic in Han's decision with unfailing accuracy.

_Good questions_, Han thought angrily to himself. Why'd Chewie always have to go and be _right_, damnit! (Especially when he wasn't even present.)

The poor Falcon finally stopped shuddering and bucking and allowed Han to get his bearings for a few minutes without threatening to fly to pieces. He looked around at the different display screens and was surprised to find a planet on one of them, pretty close by.

_What the…?_ Had he gotten to Dathomir early? He checked the coordinates. No, he was nowhere near where Dathomir should be. He was actually still in the Middle Rim, more towards the Core than towards the Outer Rim. And there was a planet here. What was it? How come it wasn't on his charts anywhere? All of these questions spun around in his head in a maddening swirl of unknowns. _Well, guess I'll just re-plot the course to Dathomir and see what happens. Still, I wonder what took me out of hyperspace in the first place…hope nothing's wrong with the engine…too bad Chewie isn't here to check it out. If it's going to blow up or space me or put me permanently in hyperspace, this'll be an awfully lonely way to die…_

Well, it seemed he had more immediate worries. His hands reached over to the navicomputer and stopped. _Why the hell is the ship moving over there? I can't have gotten sucked into that planet's orbit already, can I? From way out here?_ It was apparently quite possible, because the ship was moving with a quickening pace towards the un-named planet as if caught in a tractor beam. Han watched dumbfounded as his ship went right through the orbit levels and started into the atmosphere.

The pressure change in the cabin immediately brought him out of his stupor and he flicked a switch to engage the pressure-compensator and atmospheric regulator, full throttle. He gripped the control lever so tightly his knuckles turned white, still not understanding what was happening, but determined to get down to the surface alive. Not that he knew what the surface was. For all he knew he was going to land in some huge volcano or in the middle of an ocean. He glanced curiously at the screen displaying climate and environmental statistics, and was relieved to see that, not only did the planet contain an atmosphere with perfectly breathable oxygen, but also a nice flat field with some sort of grass-like covering. _I've landed on worse_, he decided, and released his grip a little. His hand and the lever were both sweaty.

It seemed a rough, bumpy eternity before the ship finally settled (somewhat) gently into the field. Han breathed a noisy sigh of relief, and slumped back into his chair. _This calls for some celebration_, he decided, and got up to see how outdated the most recent ration-pack in the galley was while contemplating what could possibly have pulled him out of hyperspace so abruptly.

A few hours later, he was rising from his bunk, refreshed after a long sonic shower, a hearty meal of three ration bars (only one of them outdated by more than a month), and a three-hour nap. He peered out of one of the viewports, eyeing the single setting sun. So it was evening. He wondered how long a day cycle was here. _Well, time to go meet the natives_, he thought to himself, chuckling at the old Corellian saying, which meant that it was time to take some action concerning one's situation. He strapped his blaster belt around his waist, letting it hang at a cocky angle, and took a deep breath before pressing the hatch-release control.

His first thought when he neared the bottom of the hatch-ramp and saw the odd looking people surrounding his ship was _hm- wasn't too far off about those natives_. It was quickly followed by, _stang; I gotta do something about that atmospheric detector- breathable atmosphere, my ass_.

Six standard days later, Leia stomped around the main room of her apartment in frustration. She hadn't heard from Han for a full week. Ten whole days. He'd never gone that long without at least sending her a message. _Oh, shut up, Leia, it doesn't matter, remember? You told him yourself to get out of the room, out of your life! Why did you have to be so stubborn and selfish and stupid? And why did he have to be so…Han?_ And that wasn't even her only problem. Isolder visited her every day, now, bringing her flowers, kissing her hand, and always hinting that he wouldn't mind kissing other places, too. And now his mother was due to arrive in a few days. He'd said that she just wanted to meet Leia, the girl of her son's dreams. Leia knew better_. Her own special way of saying 'get a move on, Organa, we haven't got all eternity, here!' Might just take all eternity, though_, she thought glumly. How could you possibly make the decision between your mind and your heart in anything less?

Almost mercifully, a beeping sound from her holo-messenger broke into her thoughts. She strode purposefully over to it, glad to have a useful distraction of some sort and praying that it wasn't some ridiculous advertisement.

_On second thought, maybe that would've been better_, she reflected when she saw the notification blinking on the screen. It was Han's emergency distress call. And not just any emergency distress call. It was the one the ship sent out automatically when the pilot hadn't checked in for over whatever the set time limit was. It was a handy system: the pilot would set a time limit for how long he was supposed to be gone and usually a little extra in case of minor delays. And if he hadn't checked in by that time, the ship would relay and emergency signal to the people who had been designated to receive it when the system had been installed. Luke, Lando, Chewie, and likely Han's command group would all have gotten one, she decided, trying to distract her mind from the awful message the little beeping box on the screen conveyed. Han was in trouble. And they didn't even know where he was. Her com-link sounded from across the room, and she dashed over to pick it up. Chewie's indication number was flashing on the display.

"Chewie?" she answered it.

"_Did you get Han's signal?_" he asked.

"Yes. Do you know where he is? Why aren't you with him?" she immediately regretted the accusatory tone of her voice. _Why is that I'm always hurting people these days?_ She questioned herself silently. _Then again, it's not as if no one ever hurts me_…but she shut the memory of Han's words out and concentrated on the Chewie's words instead, trying to understand the panicked wookiee.

"He left by himself? Without telling you?"

Chewie confirmed.

"Why the hell would he do a stupid thing like that?" she paused before resuming, "then again, that's just like him- going off and not telling anyone and getting lost and hurt and probably killed and just being the gods-damned nerf-herder he is!" she ranted in a furious tone.

"_It's all right, Princess. I'm sure he's fine_," Chewie soothed, his growling voice gentler than usual.

"Right. I'm sure you're right. Sorry I yelled at you, Chewie," she apologized in embarrassment, glad no one could see the pink shade her cheeks were turning. How was it that Han could make her lose her composure even when he wasn't anywhere around…maybe not even alive? _Won't think about that. Won't think about that…_

"_That's all right. I understand. Would you like me to come over before I go look for him?_" Chewie offered. Leia's heart jumped. Look for him?

"Look for him? All by yourself? And lose both of you? But you don't even know where he is!" she exclaimed, her voice shrilly going up an octave.

"_I'm going to trace the signal back to where it came from, and then go looking for him at those coordinates_," Chewie explained reasonably, deciding he felt touched (as opposed to mildly annoyed) at the Princess' concern.

"I can get you access to a really good tracer, hacker, navicomp, whatever you need!" Leia said excitedly, "just come over here. I'll get Luke to bring Artoo, and between the three of you, you should be able to figure it out in no time!"

"_All right_," Chewie acquiesced. Of course, he could trace the signal without too much difficulty, but he understood the Princess' need to be involved. After all, wouldn't he be just the same if something were to happen to Mallatobuck, no matter how many experts were on the case? Not that Malla was anywhere near as rash as Han, of course…

"Great! See you in a little while, then, Chewie," Leia said in an all too cheerful and rather false tone of voice. Chewie shook his head. It must be rough when your mate was as hotheaded as Han. Then again, being the Princess' mate couldn't be a piece of krul-biscuit either. Of course, they weren't really mates yet…_have to work on that_, reflected Chewie, _I don't know how much longer I can stand them being like this_.

Less than an hour later, Leia, Luke, Chewie, and Artoo were gathered in Leia's office. Leia's aides, accompanied by Threepio, had been kept busy bringing back and forth files and datacards of information concerning gravitic anomalies, star charts, and ready-plotted courses, all concerning the coordinates Chewie and Artoo had deciphered.

"There's not supposed to be anything there," protested Leia for at least the tenth time, "it's nowhere on the charts."

"Well aware of that, Leia," Luke muttered. Tempers were running a little short. Leia said nothing, but leaned in closer over his shoulder to see what he was looking at now.

"_The only way to find out and to help Han at all is to go there_," Chewie said, also not for the first time. Luke refrained from commenting. Artoo twittered something that only Luke managed to decipher.

"No kidding, Artoo," he answered wearily. Both Leia and Chewie frowned in annoyance.

"Artoo says that in order to-" Threepio translated, tottering in from the next room.

"Never mind, Threepio. Artoo, if you haven't got anything nice to say…" Luke began tiredly. Chewie growled something under his breath. Maybe he'd understood after all…

Leia straightened up, placing both hands on the small of her back. Everyone in the room (even the droids, it seemed) was irritated and frustrated. And they hadn't made any significant progress since they'd discovered Han's location. And it didn't look like they were going to start making any anytime soon.

"Okay, guys. This isn't getting anywhere. I'm taking one of the Council ships tomorrow and going," she announced. Luke and Chewie turned to look up at her, surprised expressions on their faces and protestations on their lips. The door opened and Threepio was attempting to apologize for something when a tall, handsome figure swept in past him.

"Going where, Leia?" it asked, planting a kiss on her forehead and thrusting some flowers into her hands. It was Isolder. He put his arms around her and started to massage her lower back, "bit stiff here," was his comment, though it sounded something like an excuse to Leia's ears. But that might just have been the objections to being kissed and touched so familiarly by him when all of her thoughts and emotions were with Han at the moment. Not to mention that everyone else in the room was doing a rather paltry job of averting their eyes, which wasn't helping Leia with her efforts to not blush red as the suns of Tatooine.

She disengaged herself, trying not to be too abrupt about it, ever mindful of the lurking media.

"Long story," she said, sighing, "but it includes canceling our lunch meeting tomorrow."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Isolder told her, seeming genuine. There was something about his manner that Leia was beginning to see through, though.

"I was looking forward to it," he added, glancing around the room.

"So…are you all going somewhere together, then? And it's managed to escape the media?" he inquired politely.

"Well, I…" Leia stalled, trying to think of something to say. No, she hadn't necessarily planned on bringing everyone with her (maybe just the droids, if anyone) but if she said that, it was obvious that Isolder would offer to accompany her. Luke must have understood.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, we were. Sort of an unplanned vacation, you know," he said, smiling what he hoped was his best 'polite smile' and wondering how Leia did this for hours on end every day of her life.

"Oh, how pleasant," Isolder said, smiling and not letting go of Leia's hand. She tried not to fidget. But, ever the gentleman, he seemed to notice her discomfort and stepped away from her, kissing her hand once more first, "well, I'll let you continue your planning in peace. You'll let me know when you leave so I can see you off?"

"Of course," Leia smiled a charming smile and closed the door behind him. Usually she would have slumped against it, sighed, and done her best not to cry for thinking of Han and how every time she spoke with Isolder, she was stabbed over and over by the feeling that she was betraying Han. Now, however, she had to keep up the charade for the very people she should have been able to be honest with.

"So, I guess we're all going together, then," she said, trying to smile for them to and rubbing the palms of her hands into her eyes, instead.

"_Good. I'll go see what sort of ship we can get. I don't think we can take a government vehicle without them noticing, can we, Princess?_" Chewie asked. Leia shook her head. _It'll be hard enough for me to get out of here without them noticing, let alone take a Council ship with me, come to I think of it._

"Whatever you can get will be fine."

"It'll be just like old times," Luke offered, trying to lighten up the atmosphere. Leia didn't have the heart to answer. How could anything be like 'old times' when Han wasn't around and she was practically engaged to another man?


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Notes: **Again, I hate to say things here that will so quickly become irrelevant, but I feel the need to apologize anyway. I really did edit all of the existing chapters to this (there are another few in the works…and more after that) while on vacation in July and they really were all ready to go. The only problem is that I only had a week between coming home from vacation and going off to college, so I only had time to correct and post one of the chapters. And then I moved and very unfortunately managed to leave the disk with the remaining chapters on it at home. And I only just managed to get them back this week, so I corrected this chapter as soon as I could, and here it is! So, I hope you can forgive me for the wait and that you haven't completely lost interest. More fun chapters are coming, I swear! Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, and remember to tell me what you think afterwards, so that I'll know how to improve in the future. Also, thanks for the comments you left on the last chapter, everyone; I really do appreciate it.

_dm1_: I'm glad you agree about the course of action our group is taking! As for what the other people who got the message will do and whether or not Isolder will find out…well, some of that is in this chapter, and for the rest…you'll just have to wait and see! J And I know everyone is worried about Han. I'll give you a little spoiler: he's in the next chapter, so don't worry- you won't have to wait for too long.

_Jessica97_: Hey, Jessica! Good to "see" you! I'm really honored that you decided to come check my story out, especially since it's not a fandom you usually follow! And thank you so much for your comments; I feel quite flattered.

_Stoned Rose_: Wow, I completely feel flattered by your comments as well! (Are you the same Stoned Rose as the one at and stuff? Who wrote "A Brush with Fame", which is one of my all time favorites? If so, I'm even more flattered than before!) Anyway, to answer your comments: I'm so glad you said that about understanding Leia's point of view and reasoning and such. That's exactly what I was going for. You know, like those situations when you make some sort of decision and then a few days/weeks/months/years later you look back on it and can't fathom why you made it the way you did? That's what I'm trying to get across- that if she continues down the path she's on right now, it'll probably turn out to be one of those. And, yup, I hurt for Han right now, too…which is strange, since I'm the one doing it to him. Hm. It's, like, Freudian or something. Actually, to be honest, though, I hurt more for Leia. Maybe just because she's the girl, so I identify better with her, but I also really feel bad that she has such a tough decision to make: helping so many people, or making herself truly happy? It's like when you're three and you can either give your little brother the ice cream or keep it for yourself. Tough stuff. Anyway, I'll stop rambling now and get on with the story, but thank you again for your extremely flattering encouragement!

_Lady Emma_: Thank you so much for your encouragement! I'm glad you like it more than the book- hopefully that'll continue. Actually, I'm sorry to say that the story isn't archived anywhere else. It's actually not finished, or else I'd have it all posted. The rest of the chapters I have written still need to be fixed on the computer (the hard copies are edited already, though) and even after that, the story is far from over. All of the already-written chapters used to be in a thread at the Han Solo and the Princess forum, but that died…so you can't read them there anymore. After it's finished…well, anyone who wants to can archive it, provided that they ask first, but I don't know if it's good enough for that…

**Chapter 7:**

Luke sat down heavily in front of his holo-messager, dropping the recording device he'd purchased on his way home onto the table in front of him. It was a cheap looking device, but it would be good enough. Besides, Leia had sent Threepio home with him when he'd told her about the problem and asked her if she'd ever seen anything like the language in the message he'd received a few weeks ago.

He leaned forward as his messages came up on the holo-screen, and pointed out the title line on one of them,

"That's the first one, Threepio. D'you recognize the language?"

"As a matter of fact, I do, Master Luke. I have never actually had cause to use it, but it is in my memory banks. It was deciphered by Tohmas Reh-lii on the planet-" began Threepio.

"Okay, okay. Maybe we can have the history lesson later, Threepio. What I really need to know is what it says."

"Yes, of course, Master Luke. I was just coming to that."

Threepio leaned in closer, and if Luke hadn't known he was a droid, he would have sworn he was squinting in concentration.

"It says 'greetings, noble Jedi, we require your savior,'" Threepio finally said. Luke frowned up at him.

"'We require your savior'?"

"Yes, that does seem a little strange. Of course, it could also translate to something similar to 'we require you to be our savior' or 'we require your savior-ness'…if, of course, the word 'savior-ness' existed," Threepio elaborated. Luke frowned some more.

"Who gave them the idea that I had any 'savior-ness'?"

"Well, Master Luke, if I may say so, you-"

"Rhetorical question, Threepio."

"Yes, of course, Master Luke. Rhetorical."

Both looked at the screen, Luke wondering what he was supposed to do about a message from some unknown people that thought he was some sort of savior or something (_Does this have something to do with my calling as a Jedi? Is this where the Force is leading me? How am I supposed to know what to do?_) and Threepio waiting to see what Luke would do. A brilliant idea suddenly formed in his electronic "mind."

"Master Luke, if you opened the rest of the message, perhaps it would make more sense in context," he suggested. Luke shook his head as if to clear it of the questions floating around in it.

"Hm?" he asked absently.

"I said: if you opened the rest of the message-"

"Oh, yeah, sure." Luke sat up in his chair and tapped the appropriate box on the screen. The rest of the message appeared on the screen, all of it in strange symbols with a few letters of Basic mixed into words that didn't actually exist in Basic. Threepio leaned forward again to examine the message.

"Well, Master Luke, I can translate all of the words individually for you but sentence and paragraph structure of this language is considerably different from that of Basic, so it might confuse your brain circuits. However, I could rearrange it for you and make it understandable," Threepio suggested.

"Sure, sounds good. I'm going to answer the rest of these and then go com Chewie to see what kind of progress he's making with finding us a ship. Just come get me when you're done."

"Yes, Master Luke."

Leia stood in the center of her room, clothes spread all around her and her clothes case open on her bed. It was one of those moments when she really regretted being too stubborn to take on another valet droid besides Threepio…and sending Threepio off with Luke just when she needed to be packing.

_I don't want a strange droid I don't know in my apartment all the time. Threepio might not have been made to be a valet droid, but he does a decent job with whatever I don't have time to do. And it's a little selfish to have a whole extra droid just to fold my clothes and make my lunch when there are sentients starving in the lower levels_, she'd thought when she'd moved into this apartment a year and a half ago. But then she had just come from five or six years of running around the galaxy and feeling lucky when she had her own room on whatever ship she happened to be staying on, let alone a whole droid just to take care of her clothes. She'd forgotten how much time and effort bureaucracy took…and how much trouble your clothes were when you were part of one and needed to dress appropriately.

_Oh, stop being ridiculous, Organa. Just pack the damn things. You're just going to rescue someone you lo- someone in the middle of nowhere. It's not going to be an ambassadorial reception_.

So she started throwing flight suits, combat boots, utility belts, some spare blaster charges…and a few dresses, (just in case she needed to meet with someone important in whatever system Han was stuck in) into her case. By the time she was finished there were two cases full and one smaller shoulder bag. _Well, maybe it wasn't the most efficient packing job in history, but I did it myself in less than three hours_…

Her congratulatory mood lasted another five minutes, until she remembered that she was meeting Isolder at the Embassy Café in twenty minutes, before she went to put in a half a day's work so she could leave as soon as possible with (relative) peace of mind.

Her dressing job was almost as efficient as her packing had been and she arrived at the Embassy Café, which was on the main floor of the Senate building, only ten minutes late.

Isolder rose gracefully (_is he ever not graceful?_) from where he was seated at a choice table, and smiled. He stuck to kissing her hand, this time, for which Leia was grateful.

"So," he said after they had placed their orders with a waiter droid, "do I get to hear more about this trip you're planning?"

"Well, it's a little strange," Leia began, figuring any excuses she gave herself now would probably come up handy during the telling of the story, "basically, we're going out to the middle of nowhere to find someone we're looking for. It's sort of a…family thing," she finished, wondering how those words had found their way to her mouth. _Family thing? Luke is the only one who's family in this business. What am I talking about?_

"You wouldn't possibly be open to having an escort, would you?" he asked. Leia looked up at him, into his eyes, trying to see past all the diplomatic politeness he always exuded. _What does he really want? Just to make sure I don't do anything I'll regret as his possible future wife? Or is he genuinely concerned for my safety? Does he really figure I'll be so much safer with him along? _

"Isolder, I don't know if…I mean…why?" she asked, her words falling over one another. Maybe the best approach was the honest one.

"Well, I think it would be a good opportunity to get to know each other a little more. Everything is so busy here on Coruscant; maybe a little vacation is exactly what we need," he explained. _Could he possibly, actually just want to come along for my company?_

"That's very true, but are you sure this is the kind of vacation you want us to go on? I mean, I packed flight suits and combat boots," she said, immediately scolding herself for it. _Come on, you idiot, stop being so clumsy! You just practically told him you wanted to go someplace with him, which you'll now have to get yourself out of, and then called him a wimp, all in the same sentence!_

"You mean like an adventure?" Isolder asked, grinning with amusement. Leia looked up quickly, surprised that he wasn't insulted and that he possibly hadn't caught on to her unintentional invitation on some later vacation.

"You don't think I'd like an adventure? Come on, now, just try me. I used to have adventures all the time when I was a little boy." Leia raised her eyebrows skeptically at him. Teasing was something she had plenty of practice with, even if most of it had been with Han and not…_no! We're not thinking about that, remember? You've got a prince here offering to go and have an adventure with you even though he has no clue what he could be getting himself into (not that you do either, but that's besides the point). Just enjoy it and stop being so stupid_.

"You don't believe me, huh?" he said, kissing the palm of her hand, which had somehow ended up in his. She pulled it back as gently and gracefully as she could. He was a prince. She was a princess. They made a picture-perfect couple. So why did it feel wrong every time he touched her?

"You're right," he conceded, even his eyes seeming to grin, "I sat in my little chair and listened to Mother dealing with everything and watched the servants' kids running around having adventures and wished I could join them. So they were vicarious adventures, I guess. But that counts for something, right?" They both laughed, and he let go of her hand as if nothing had happened. _At least he can make me laugh, and he's never really made me cry…at least not directly_…although she could have cried right then, wishing she could stomp out the constant comparisons going on in her head. _Well, he does this, but, then again, Han does that and if this, then that_…would it never end? When was her mind ever going to be at peace again? And when it was, after she made the decision, could her heart ever be happy again?

"I'm going to rescue Han," she blurted out, looking up at him in shock when she realized what she'd said. She couldn't read the expression in his eyes. Hurt at her deception? (Had she truly been deceiving him? Wasn't it just the truth with some parts left out?) Surprise at her honesty? She looked back down to avoid having to read his gaze. Isolder looked back down as well, under the pretext of reading his chrono.

"I think we'd better postpone the rest of our conversation; we both have things to do," he said in a quiet voice. Leia winced in her heart…_was_ it her heart? No, it was the part of her mind that liked to pretend it was her heart, trying to feel emotional about things that were actually purely rational, just to fill the emptiness, that shattered at that moment. _Damn you, Organa! You've ruined it. You're a gods-damned diplomat; why'd you have to go and blurt that out like that? Now he'll leave and you won't have to bother with making a decision. It'll be already made for you and you'll regret it forever, every time you see a problem that you might have been able to fix with this!_ She looked back up at him as if begging him…for what? She didn't even know.

"I'm sorry, Isolder. It's just that Luke and Han were all the family I had for a long time, ever since…since Alderaan. They got me through the worst part of my life…I can't just ignore that," she stopped, not sure what to say next, and sure she'd said too much already. She'd never discussed Alderaan with him before. _Maybe that's why everything feels wrong with him. He doesn't know what makes me happy and what makes me sad. He doesn't know anything about my past, anything about what's inside. He doesn't even know what my favorite color is. And I don't know anything about him. How can he possibly expect a real relationship from me?_ She paused in her thoughts. _But maybe that's my fault, too. Maybe if I wasn't so selfish, I would have shared some of myself with him and we'd be a lot happier._ She paused again, in anguish. _But how many times can I share myself with people who don't give back before there's nothing of _me_ left?_ The thought that Han was the one who really gave back and that Isolder never really had yet would have made her decision for her right then and there and hurt too much doing it…so she didn't think it, and was grateful when Isolder's voice broke into her thoughts.

"I know what you mean," he said, kissing her hand. (Did he really? She was too tired to decide.) "I'll com you later."

She nodded and stood still as he turned slowly to walk away. Suddenly he turned back.

"The offer still stands, you know."

She looked up at him, but he was already on his way out. Now that was something she hadn't been expecting. Could it be that she had been wrong about his sincerity? _Well, Organa, how many guys do you know that would go help the girl they want to marry rescue their rival? Maybe you should stop judging people and work on judging yourself, instead_.

The departure date had been set for "the next day Leia can cancel all of her meetings for," which was supposed to be the next day. Luke was somewhat doubtful of this, since Leia's schedule was so subject to change and "emergency meetings." But, then again, she was _Leia_, and if anyone could juggle a schedule, it was her. And they were going after _Han_, and if there was anyone Leia was likely to juggle her schedule for, it was him.

The wait was all right with Luke, though, because even though he was eager to get going and find Han, he really wanted to resolve the whole holo-message situation. Threepio had taken three hours to decipher both messages and the recording that went with them, only to find that they all said basically the same thing. It went something like this:

_Noble Jedi Skywalker,_

_We beg your assistance or that of any replacement you would like to send. We have been exiled from our homeland since the days of the Dark Lord of the Sith and are confidant that you can help us right this wrong. We are presently located on Imperial Colony B-23 and are awaiting your presence. The Force be with you_.

And that was it. No signature, no coordinates, no nothing. Just the colony number (_don't they know that no one keeps records of which planet had been which colony anymore?_) and the fact that they needed Luke's help to find their lost homeland (_how in the nine hells am I supposed to do that?_). He leaned back in his chair, pensively supporting his chin in his hands as he watched the recording one more time.

In a grainy, low-quality image, it displayed a tall woman in a tight fitting suit of some sort of shiny, multi-colored material that looked like scales. _Some sort of reptile skin, maybe?_ She was speaking in the language that Threepio had deciphered and had no name for in Basic, and apparently she was reiterating what both messages said, but in a more eloquent and moving manner. Or so Threepio said. Personally, Luke thought she looked pretty staid and rational, but according to Threepio she was being remarkably emotional. _I'll take your word for it_, thought Luke, switching her off and going into the kitchen to continue his contemplations over dinner.

_Well, whoever they are, I can't help them unless I find out where Colony B-23 is, which I can't do until I get some time to research. And finding Han definitely takes precedence over helping some people I don't know, no matter how un-Jedi-like that is. After all, I'm not a Jedi Master yet. I can still do what _I_ want to do. The Force will have plenty of time to take over the rest of my life_. Besides, it could just all be somebody's idea of a good joke...

Leia awoke on the morning of their departure with two thoughts tangled together in her mind. The first was mostly just apprehension about their trip. The second went something like _I know I've forgotten something_…

She found out what it was when they reached the docking bay where the ship Chewie had rented was located. On one side of the bay was a small, shabby looking ship that resembled a smaller Falcon with less character. Opposite it rested a large fleet comprised of one huge cruiser-yacht with the emblem of the Hapes Consortium emblazoned on its side, surrounded by a veritable army of Hapan Battle Dragons. Isolder's own, slightly smaller yacht was there as well, somewhere near the edge.

_Oh, stang!_ Leia swore to herself. _Isolder's mother. Now what am I supposed to do? Why'd Chewie have to go and use my clearance to get the ship he found parked in the diplomats' bay?_ She thumbed her com-link, which was already set to Chewie's frequency from their conversation last night.

"Chewie?"

"_Princess_."

"I assume we're the scrappy little one in the corner?"

"_Yes, it was the best I could do on such short notice_," he began.

"It's fine," Leia interrupted him hurriedly, "just speed up the preparations. I'll be there in less than five minutes and we need to leave absolutely as soon as possible." She shut off the com-link and began to stride over to the ship Chewie had procured. She hadn't talked to Isolder since the evening of that fateful conversation at the Café two days ago, and even then they'd only spoken of banalities, carefully avoiding any mention of anything of actual importance. So he didn't know the exact date of her departure. And she hadn't known the exact date of the Queen Mother's arrival. The fact that they coincided was a very bad thing, indeed. _If the Queen Mother sees me_…she didn't bother finishing the thought.

Not that it mattered anymore a few moments later. She was halfway across the distance to their ship when a tall, graceful figure appeared in the distance on her right, running towards her. Isolder. And if she looked beyond him, she could see the hovering dais that floated some distance behind him, containing a whole retinue centered around what could only be the Queen Mother of Hapes. _Stang. I'm screwed_.

"Leia! Leia!" called Isolder as he caught up with her, "you didn't tell me you were leaving today!"

"I know. I'm sorry," she said, not wanting to look at him. _No sense in being shy about it, Organa. You never have been before and you can't possibly get into any more trouble than you're already in_. So she raised her head and looked him square in the eyes, "You didn't tell me your mother was getting here today." Isolder grinned at her. (_What in the twelve hells is there to be happy about? Han could be in some kind of trouble- and considering that it's Han, that's pretty likely- and now I'm stuck in some gods-damned diplomatic mess!_)

"I know. I'm sorry, too. Guess that makes us even," his casual bantering words belied the ceremonious manner in which he bent over her hand and offered her his arm as he turned her around to face Ta'a Chume, Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium.

"Mother," he said, bowing, "may I present Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan." Leia curtsied gracefully, her diplomatic Court skills coming back to her from her days as the pride and joy of the Alderaanian Royal Court.

"Rise, my child," Ta'a Chume said from her throne on the floating dais, "I am delighted to meet you. Come sit here, by me, and we'll get to know one another." The haughty, proud face offered Leia a haughty, proud smile. And Leia smiled dazzlingly right back, wracking her mind for a solution all the while. She needn't have worried. Of course the Prince came to the rescue. (Didn't they always?)

"Oh, I'm sorry, Mother, but I'm afraid Leia has had a mission scheduled unexpectedly since we last spoke. It's something of an emergency. And I'm going with her," Isolder said hurriedly, jumping onto the dais to give his mother a polite kiss on the cheek. Leia couldn't decide whether to be grateful or angry. _Well, he just saved my neck, I suppose he has a right to stick something for himself into the deal_…_but if he didn't know when I was leaving, how is ready to go right now? He couldn't possibly have known when we were leaving…even we didn't really, and we certainly didn't leak it out to anyone. Mon Mothma doesn't even know!_

Apparently, the Queen Mother couldn't decide what to think, either. Her son and his possible fiancée were leaving to where she couldn't really keep her eye on them to make sure everything turned out just the way she wanted it to. And yet, that young Princess of his seemed a little reluctant, from what she'd seen. Maybe a little trip together was just what they needed.

"I'll contact you as soon as I can, Mother. Do enjoy Coruscant; it's really quite a fascinating place," Isolder was saying over his shoulder as he jumped off the dais. He took Leia's hands again, and neither Ta'a Chume nor Leia could tell if it was to put on a show for his mother, or because he really wanted to be holding her hands.

"Leia, I've had my droids keep both my Battle Dragon and my yacht ready. I have an extra bunkroom on my yacht, and I'm sure it would be more comfortable than…" he offered, his eyes looking seriously into hers. Again she couldn't tell whether he was being sincere or not. The message was clear, (_I'd be glad to have you along- and **only** you_) but she was touched anyway. _He's kept his ships ready all this time just so he could be ready to leave with me whenever I happened to show up?_ But she still couldn't see herself spending all that time one on one with Isolder. No matter how good it might be for their relationship and how much nicer his yacht was than the scrap-heap Chewie had found…

"The Battle Dragon will probably do us a lot more good if we get into a sticky situation," she said, her message equally clear. Isolder nodded, his disappointment showing only in his eyes. He bowed over her hand once more in a gesture that was by now familiar to her, before heading towards his starfighter.

She couldn't tell whether she had made a mistake or done the right thing, but she was too tired and her thoughts were too filled with worry for Han to really care.


	8. Chapter 8

Author's Notes: Not much to say about this one…as usual, feedback is greatly appreciated and to those who left reviews already: thank you so, so much for your encouragement! 

_Stoned Rose_: Thank you so much! I definitely hope to be updating this at least fairly regularly…but of course school always grabs me at the most inopportune moments and then won't let go for weeks at a time…I'll definitely do my best though!

_Eileen Blazer_: Thank you so much for all your kind praise! I know what you mean about Leia's issues with the New Republic…but she's just such a giving, selfless person that I think she might just go nuts and do something like this. I mean, when you look back on parts of your life, stuff seems so clear and obvious, but when you're actually there making the decisions, it can be much more confusing. So I guess that's how I justify her hesitation. (Otherwise there wouldn't be a plot, too, so I have to justify it somehow, right?J)

_The flaming angel_: Why thank you! I don't know if we can compare this situation to Johnny Depp covered in…etcetera etcetera, but thank you anyway! As I mentioned to Stoned Rose, I definitely do plan on updating as often as possible!

Chapter 8: 

Han awoke slowly, regretting it as soon as he had enough presence of mind to take in his situation. The first thing he noticed was the pounding in his head. It felt like an army of miniature Ewoks were marching around in there, playing their war drums as fast and loud as possible. Han groaned, and regretted that immediately as well. Not only did it add a bunch of stomping banthas to the mess in his head, but it also made him realize how dry and raw his throat was. Finally he worked up the courage to open his eyes…and was so pleased by the fact that they weren't assaulted by lasers or sunlight that he decided to attempt to sit up. He soon discovered that every muscle in his body ached, as if he'd tried to run some sort of marathon on a heavy-grav planet. But, all in all, it wasn't so bad. He could definitely recall being in worse scrapes than this.

Then he remembered where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to be doing. _Find Dathomir…get Leia back…_ And he remembered what had happened instead. Or, at least, what had happened before he'd been mysteriously knocked out at the base of his landing ramp. He leaned his head against the wall and sighed. _What the hell am I doing here? _

His wondering didn't last long (either that or he had dosed off again) because what seemed like a few moments later, the door to the room he'd been locked up in opened. _Stang, what's wrong with me?_ He wondered quickly before whoever it was had time to get inside the room. _I wake up in a strange place on a strange bed after being knocked out and I don't even get up to try the door? Must've been some powerful stuff, whatever they got me with…_He felt the back of his head for bruises, wondering if they'd literally knocked him out, or if they'd done something a little more subtle. Whoever "they" were…

It didn't take him long to find out. Two human women of average height (_probably a little taller than Leia_, he decided) entered the room, and he spent the next few seconds sizing up who he assumed were his captors. They were wearing tight body suits of some sort of reptile skin; it seemed, with nothing on their feet, which looked fairly normal, if a little calloused. Each held a large staff almost as tall as she was, and carved with mysterious designs. He felt the back of his head again, gently, figuring the sticks must be what they'd used.

Suddenly, one of them spoke, in a harsh, loud language that he didn't recognize from anywhere- and he'd heard (and seen) a _lot_ of languages in his time.

"Uh, slow down, girls," he mumbled under his breath, bringing his hand around to the front of his head and rubbing his forehead miserably. He couldn't find any lumps on his head, so apparently they hadn't knocked him out with anything big and hard…unless they had some really fast-healing bacta-type stuff, which didn't seem likely, considering the lizard suits and the big sticks. But they certainly weren't improving his headache, jabbering on in that ugly language of theirs.

He was about to ask where his ship was when, suddenly, without warning, they strode over to him, hoisted him up by the elbows, and started to half walk and half drag him out of the room. Not taking the time to be amazed at their strength, Han concentrated on staying on his feet. The floor, which seemed to be whirling around him and doing its best to tip him over, was no help in his endeavors. He shook his head in frustration, trying to clear it of the swaying sensation. He didn't even have time to take notice of what sort of room they had been keeping him in before its door clanged shut behind him (that didn't really register either) and he was in some sort of open air hallway. On one side of them was a row of doors, presumably all to rooms like the one they'd just exited. On the other was a row of arches, open windows that extended from about his waist to roughly a meter above his head. And beyond the arches…nothing. Han squinted, turning his head to get a better view. Okay, so not exactly nothing. The equivalent of a few stories down, he could see what appeared to be the roof of another passage like the one he walked on now, and a few stories down from that, another one; there were about three below him. And below that there appeared to be flat ground as far as he could see, decorated by smallish dark dots at regular intervals. Or maybe that blue sliver off on the horizon was a lake. _Or maybe I'm just imagining it all and this is some crazy spice-dream_, he half-thought and half-wished to himself. _Nope. No such luck_, he decided after a moment's reflection, _the grip these ladies have on my arm is way too strong to be a spice-dream._ He wondered transiently whether there were many stories more of little passageways like this one above him…and decided it was too dizzying an idea to contemplate. He looked down at his feet, which were half walking and half dragging along behind him, and at the floor below them. _No, not floor_, he corrected. It seemed to be gravel and dirt. _So this is all natural stuff. Some crazy kind of mountain? With stuff built into it, maybe?_ He decided he didn't really want to know the answer to that question either. He decided what he really wanted right now was to get his hands on some painkiller pills, and fast. This headache didn't seem to be going anywhere fast. Before he could decide whether or not it was worth it to try one more time to start a conversation with the women propelling him along, they came to a sudden halt and he looked dizzily up from his feet to take a glance around. And almost fainted.

All of a sudden, instead of seeming miles on end of covered passageway with doors and arches, there spread before him a plateau that he could just barely make out the other end of. And ambling around all over the plateau were huge beasts that looked vaguely familiar to him. He had a fleeting vision of himself with Leia, in the Falcon after their escape from Tatooine two years ago…with her filling him in on the details of their stay there, frustrated because he wasn't understanding what a rancor looked like, then her standing up excitedly and turning on her datapad, plugging in the handy encyclopedia-chip she always carried around her for emergencies, and pulling up a picture of a rancor for him. Well, if the rancors in those pictures had been normal sized, these were giants. _When I get home, I'll have to burst Luke's bubble and tell him his buddy was only a midget_, he thought. He would've laughed at his own joke if the situation hadn't been so dire. He stopped himself. **_When_**_ I get home? Who're you kidding, Solo? Who says you're ever getting home? Maybe your luck finally ran out…too bad Leia's not here to laugh. _His throat choked up and he couldn't tell whether it was from anger (and whether that anger would have been at himself or Leia was a whole other story) or regret that he would never hear her laugh again.

His train of thought was broken by a different laugh, one he'd just as soon not have heard. He turned his head disbelievingly from side to side, looking at each of the women in turn. Their heads were thrown back and they were laughing in the same harsh voices they used for conversation, and they were most definitely laughing at him. Whether it was because he looked stunned on account of the rancors or angry or sad (on account of his situation in general), he couldn't figure out. Not that it mattered. Now he just felt angry. These ladies might be almost as strong as Chewie and they might have giant rancors for pets, but that didn't give them the right to laugh at him.

"What's so funny?" he shouted, feeling his strength come back with his anger. It felt good to get angry, especially after the past few weeks of careful self-control (that had failed him in the end, anyway) with Leia and her stupid prince, so he let it all out in a fluent stream of curses in every language he could think of, interspersed with graphic descriptions of the two women, their families, their pets, their planet, their hygiene, their intellects, and their general appearance. He finished by demanding once more what they found humorous about the present situation. Apparently, either they understood at least one of those languages, or just didn't like his tone of voice, because they started to laugh again, but with a more menacing tone, and grabbed him by the arms. Han had just enough time to reflect that venting on the people keeping him prisoner might not have been one of his brighter ideas before he felt himself being pushed and pulled all at once in a general upwards direction. The next thing he knew, he was securely mounted between one of the monster rancors' neck plates and the monster rancor was galloping down the mountain on a trail that Han couldn't make out at a speed that was incredibly impressive for a creature this size. It took almost all of his energy and concentration to stay on the thing…and the rest of it to keep from being sick.

Luckily, before he knew it, he was at the bottom of the mountain, on the dusty, barren plain. Now, he could see that the little blackish lumps he had seen dotting the ground from his former vantage point were, in fact, people. Actually, they were all men and all squatting on the balls of their feet, peering intently at the ground. As his rancor stopped at the edge of the plain, he realized that they were looking at holes. Each man had a hole in front of him, about the same circumference as the average human head, and each man was looking into it as if it was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. _Yeah, maybe this is a spice-dream_, Han reflected, _and they're all having an even weirder one than me_.

Once again, his thoughts were interrupted. This time, it was by the rancor, who suddenly bent forward and dumped Han unceremoniously on the hard, dry ground, making a cloud of dust puff up around him.

"Ungh," Han groaned aloud, bringing both hands to his forehead in attempt to still the pounding and ringing that was scrambling his mind. After a few moments, he slowly stood, just in case one of the hole-watching guys should decide to get up and add some more bruises to Han's now-flourishing collection. When that didn't happen, Han took the unexpected leisure time to look around him. The mountain went down steeply all the way to where it met the plain and most of it was carved into little cave-looking dwellings, most of which looked empty for the moment. Empty, but lived in. Maybe all these men, who populated the field for as far as he could see, lived in the little caves. Or maybe the women he had seen swarming around the various plateaus and passageways higher up. Or maybe the angry-looking one that was striding toward him from the direction of the caves right then, with a very stern look on her face. He took a very brief moment to observe that she had a rather nice figure, outlined very tightly in a green version of the lizard suits he had seen on the women who had dragged him around. Her hair was a flaming red that he usually didn't find very attractive, but, contrasted with the green, wasn't half bad. What he didn't like was the whip-looking thing in her hand.

He found his premonitions weren't far from right when she got closer and cracked it menacingly at him. He looked back at her with what he hoped was a bold and challenging look, but all he got for his trouble was another crack of the whip thing. He hoped she was planning to use it on the rancor rather than him, and was disappointed to find that the darned thing had disappeared. _Probably went back up the mountain. Smart animal_, he had time to think before the woman planted herself squarely in front of him.

She wasn't as old as he'd first assumed. Certainly no older than Leia, he decided. But thoughts of any kind left his head when she spoke. In Basic.

"Name. Teneniel Djo," she said in a clipped, abrupt voice, "You. Men." She indicated the field of men squatting next to holes that surrounded them.

"Uh, nice to meet you, too" Han said, not daring to hold out a hand to her, "My name's Han. Han Solo. You might've heard of me. Actually, I know for a fact that there are quite a few people out there that would be willing to pay lots of money to have me back, you know," he continued conversationally, squinting at her in the glare of the sun, which reflected harshly from her hair and clothes.

"You. Men," she repeated, motioning towards the field again.

"Yeah, I know. We're all men and there's a whole lot of them doing gods-know-what over there. My point is-" he began again.

"You, men!" she said forcefully, cracking her whip in their direction again.

"Or not," he mumbled in reference to his ransom idea. Apparently she didn't take it that way and all of a sudden there was another iron grip on his arm, dragging him along towards his fellow men. As they drew nearer, he noticed a few un-manned holes and an uncomfortable feeling sank into his belly. Finally, the girl (or woman; he couldn't decide) stopped almost on top of one of the holes and pointed at it sternly.

"You." And another jab at the hole, "now."

"Okay, okay, I get it, I get it," he answered, easing himself to the same squatting position as the rest of the men. Once she seemed satisfied that he understood, the native walked away, throwing a look over her shoulder every few meters. Han watched her go with a mixture of admiration, apprehension, and anger. As yet, there was only one other woman in the world that could get him to obey so easily. Then again, the woman he had in mind had never needed a whip and enough drugs to take out a tauntaun to do so. _Leia, where are you?_ He wondered, taking a moment's break to look up at the sky before coming up with a much more appropriate question. _Where the hell am I?_

Several hours later, he had come to the conclusion that those other men either had much better knees than he did, had had a lot of practice, or were considerably more uncomplaining that he was willing to be about the whole kneeling situation. He was about to stand up and do some hearty complaining to whoever would listen when suddenly something shot past in the hole. Something long, white, and strange looking. He peered down at the hole curiously, wondering if that was what all these men were watching so intently for. Whatever it was, it must have traveled to another hole, because all of a sudden the cry went up from one of his neighbors.

"Whuffa!"

"Whuffa, whuffa!" his peers joined in, "whuffa!"

Han stood up, startled, and looked around him, wondering what a whuffa was and why it made these guys so excited. Suddenly, the white worm-looking thing appeared in his hole again. Without any conscious thought on his part, one of his hands shot out and grabbed it, quickly joined by the other. In a flash, the other men gathered around him in an awed mob, before he could even figure out why he had done a crazy thing like that. Well, it seemed it was the right thing to do after all.

"Whuffa! Whuffa!" the mob around him cried. He heard what he decided to take as encouragement in several different languages he vaguely recognized, and a whole bunch of others he didn't. He looked up in confusion, about ready to drop the thing, which seemed to be trying to get away.

"Whuffa!" they shouted some more, in a more desperate tone. Could it be that the lucky man to catch a whuffa was a newcomer and didn't know what to do about it? They looked at each other in wonder and quickly started making pulling motions.

"So I'm supposed to pull this thing out of the ground?" Han mumbled to himself, "well, fine then." _Not like I've got anything better to do_, he reminded himself silently. He started pulling, one hand over the other, still wondering why he had to be the one to do all the pulling. He looked up at the expectant faces of the other men once, quickly, and wondered why they didn't join in to help. The whuffa (he assumed that was the thing's name) was putting up quite a fight, after all.

About a half hour into it, his arms began to tire and he began to wonder just how long a whuffa was. Ten minutes later, he had decided, by the looks on the faces of all the men that this was a whuffa of extraordinary length. _Sure. Of course **I** get stuck with the super-sized whuffa_.

It took him a full two hours to get the whole thing out of the ground, and by that time it was coiled into a sprawling pile about twice as big as he was. His fellow whuffa hunters were in a state of ecstatic joy, jumping up and down, rolling around laughing, clapping each other on the shoulder, and venturing hesitantly closer to investigate Han's handiwork and to get a closer look at the hero himself. Apparently a whuffa, especially one of this size, was regarded as quite a prize, and not one to be touched by anyone but its captor.

Han would have been proud to be the center of attention and a hero, by the looks of it, (under normal circumstances it certainly wouldn't have bothered him that he still had no idea why or what he was being proud of) but, as he brushed his sweaty, chapped hands off on his pants, he felt the dizziness and weakness he'd forgotten during his whuffa-hunt coming back. _Must be more out of shape than I thought_, he decided, moving one hand to wipe at his forehead and steady his balance. Before it could get there, he felt the same blackness as the day he'd arrived here settling in on him, and he didn't even have time for a last thought this time…

Leia awoke suddenly, curled into as tight a ball as she could manage, and gasping for air. _Han!_ Her mind screamed out in desperation.

"Please, no," she whimpered plaintively, "please, gods, no. Han…" she shut her eyes tight against the images in her mind, the images of her latest nightmare. She had nightmares on a fairly frequent basis, generally more so when she was under great amounts of stress or pressure, but they usually involved some fear or failure from her past: the Death Star, Alderaan, refugees, Vader…anything from her past that had once caused her to feel fear or failure. Never before had Han figured so prominently in them.

She had been walking down the passageway of the Death Star, under heavy fire, of course, just like it had been on that day six years ago, when they'd first met. The difference, this time had been that Han had been shot as he leapt heroically into the garbage chute…and then he'd sunk to the bottom of that awful lake of garbage, continuing to sink and sink and sink, with an expression of pure shock and horror frozen on his face, getting further and further away from her before she could reach out to grab him and save him, even though in reality the "lake" had been only a foot or so deep.

"Han," she gasped again, as the almost physical pain of missing him gripped her chest. She clutched whatever she was holding tighter to her chest, not realizing that it was only a pillow (not Han, no matter how hard she wished it were). When she did realize what it was, she released it, bringing fresh tears to her face, and brought it back up to the head of the bunk, pulling the covers more tightly around herself as she went. But she couldn't really be warm, not without Han…

Luke sat cross-legged on his bunk, his eyes closed and his head leaning against the wall that separated the room he'd chosen from that where Leia slept, listening to her. It was the second time that night that she'd awakened him with her cries, and this time he didn't force himself back to sleep. Instead, he sat up and listened, figuring he could permit himself to eavesdrop if it was for her own good. What he heard both worried and relieved him. _I know which path she should take now, that's for sure, but if anyone knows how to do it, it certainly isn't me…_

He lay back down, wishing he could go in and comfort his sister, but knowing he wouldn't really be welcome. Only Han would be welcome right now, and that thought filled him with regret, too. _Why didn't I realize it before?_


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Notes: **As usual, the soon to be irrelevant apology: my apologies for taking forever to get this up…again. What can I say? Being freshman in college doesn't leave much time for such mundane pursuits as sleep and writing. Anyway, here it is. Thanks for all the encouraging comments and suggestions, again, everyone. Here are the individual responses…oh, and I'm almost positive there was another one that I got in an email but isn't showing up on the reviews page, so whoever you are (I want to say _PrincessDaisy_ for some reason, but I'm not sure) thank you and I'm sorry I can't give you a more detailed response!

_Eileen B_.: Yeah, I laughed for so long over the ridiculous-ness of the whole whuffa thing in the original that I felt this just wouldn't be a proper COPL rewrite without it. I really appreciated your comment about Han comparing girls to Leia all the time. I actually wasn't even doing that consciously, so I'm really excited that you picked it out as something spiffy. Makes me think that I can come up with halfway decent stuff every once in a while, even if I'm not watching myself like a hawk. Anyway, thanks!

_Flaming Angel_: Aw, thank you! I'm really, really flattered by your comment. And I definitely plan to continue. It may take me forever and a half, but I don't like abandoning things half finished, so it will get finished…eventually.

_Ann_: Thanks! And like I said to Flaming Angel, I definitely plan to continue. Stay tuned!

_Stormygurlz_: Now, is that incredible in a good way or a bad way? (About Leia's indecisiveness, I mean.) I'm not really comfortable with her character yet, especially in this situation since I've never been in a situation even remotely similar myself, so I'm never sure if I'm doing it right. Hm…well, I guess we'll see. And about that whole Isolder eavesdropping on a nightmare thing…do you have, like, telepathic abilities by any chance? Wow. I don't want to give anything away, but definitely come back and read the last few chapters of this when you get the chance. You'll know it when you see it…and I definitely wrote the scene I'm referring to before I read your comment, too. Very strange.

Anyway, here it is, everyone. Hopefully it's up to snuff!

**Chapter 9:**

Leia brushed a stray strand of hair out of her way and leaned in closer to the datapad on the table, cringing both at the soreness in her shoulders and the contents of the article she was reading. She reached both hands around to the back of her neck and rubbed a little, attempting to massage the tightness out of her muscles, a tightness that seemed to go all the way into her bones. Maybe even into her heart. Pushing that half-formed thought systematically out of her mind, she peered at the words on the screen, trying to bring them back into focus.

Saving her the trouble with a welcome distraction, Luke ambled into the room, his hair still disheveled from his sonic shower.

"Still working?" he asked, in a tone she hadn't heard in a long time. Not since before she had straightened things out between him and her and Han. _No_. She shoved that thought out as well; even thinking Han's name was no longer safe. She concentrated on Luke, instead. _Well, we know that's not the problem_, she thought to herself thankfully, _but there're certainly more than enough problems to make up for it_. So many that she couldn't be bothered to deal with it right now. _I'm sorry, Luke_, she apologized in her mind, _I'm too centered on myself to help you with anything now, and I know it and I know it's wrong, but I can't help it. We can add that to my list of betrayals. _Betrayals? When had she started using that word for it? It was no use, she decided, she simply could not get away from it.

"Yeah," she answered Luke, making one last effort to clear all thoughts of Han form her mind in order to at least attempt a halfway normal conversation with her own brother over breakfast.

"Well, sort of," she amended, "I'm reading the summaries of recent news shows from the 'Net." She allowed Luke to lean over her shoulder to read the headlines of the article she happened to have on the screen.

"Fairy Tale for a Rebel," Luke read, "The Galaxy's Favorite Princess Finally Gets her Prince." He raised his eyebrows, glancing at her and groaning inwardly. This could not be good.

"Despite her resistance fighter tendencies and penchant for smuggler pilots with questionable backgrounds, our own Princess Leia finally seems to have settled down with her very own prince, just like something from a tale of the Princess' native Alderaan," Luke continued, reading the first sentence of the article out loud.

"Smuggler pilot with questionable backgrounds?" he was about to ask before deciding that he would need to be a little more subtle in his approach of the "Han subject." Instead he looked at his sister.

"Do they say stuff like this all the time? Isn't that a little…invasive, or something?" Luke asked in the most diplomatic tone he could muster. Leia laughed wryly.

"Don't you ever watch the 'Net, little brother? Not only do they say 'stuff like this' all the time, but they say it about me and you and a good many of the people we know with enough variations of the truth to make me confused about my own life!" she said, reaching up to kiss Luke's cheek.

"So why do you read it?" he asked automatically, keeping himself in the conversation as neutrally as possible while he analyzed her last sentence. _'Confused about my own life?' Hm…on the first level, it could just be a joke. But then maybe she's trying to tell me she's confused about where her life should be going…and maybe even that she wants my help! Or maybe she's just trying to say that the media confuses everyone about everything…or maybe it _has_ driven her crazy_. He discarded the last idea immediately and a good number of the ones that followed. _No, I'd better just stop being a Jedi Knight for a little while and just be an older brother. Or younger. Whatever she needs_.

"Well, it's important to know what the media is saying about me for when I have to give public statements," Leia was explaining, "I mean, if some guy walks up to me on the street and wants to know about the time I was abducted by radical members of the Imperial Liberal faction, I have to be ready to tell him that it never happened. I can't just stand there and look stupid while he tells me about my own abduction."

"Your own abduction that never actually occurred but somehow made it onto interplanetary news. Well, it's creative; you have to give them that," Luke commented, eliciting a reluctant half-grin from his sister.

"Exactly. It's actually entertaining, sometimes, the stuff they manage to come up with. Once you get past the embarrassment and hurt, of course," she said, every last hint of that grin's existence swiftly disappearing from her face as she glanced at the screen of the datapad, taking in the bold headings. She scrolled down idly, not really knowing why. It wasn't as if she really wanted Luke to see all this. Except maybe subconsciously, where the burden was rapidly becoming too much for even Leia Organa to bear.

"Prince Isolder is 'gallant,' 'chivalric,' 'noble,' 'handsome,' 'rich,' 'aristocratic,' and 'a hunk,' said some of _Galaxy News_' watchers in Coruscant when polled just last week. Public opinion of the Princess' apparent choice seems to be rising with every passing day, and we can only hope that the Princess' opinion continues to do the same. Stay tuned for tomorrow's edition of our own Real Life Fairy Tale," Luke read the last sentence. Under it was a collage of holos of Leia and Isolder, all taken recently: a dimly lit dinner at a renowned Coruscant restaurant, a stroll through a park, Isolder handing her a bouquet of flowers and carrying her work case, even the two of them in conversation in the docking bay just before their departure. And all of these were arranged around a larger holo of Isolder bending over her hand, a gesture that had made him famous throughout the galaxy, particularly among unmarried women in their twenties and thirties…and some married ones as well.

_I wonder if Han has seen these_, flashed across the minds of both twins at once. Luke allowed the thought to run to completion, wondering about Han's reaction if he had, and hoping he was all right, wherever he was, and, most of all, that they weren't going to be too late. For what, he wasn't quite sure, but surely something must be salvageable out of this awful situation he'd let things get to. The possibility that it didn't really have anything to do with him barely occurred to him. A Jedi should be responsible for everything, especially the welfare of his own family. _Oh, stop making this about yourself, Skywalker, and try to do something to help you sister for once_. He looked down at Leia, trying to see her face without appearing too obvious about it. She had thrust the thought down with the rest of them. _There must be a whole stack of them by now_, she thought detachedly, _all those unfinished thoughts. They'll explode soon, maybe. Too many of them up there_…

"How about we go see what Chewie has been up to in the galley all morning and then you can get me up to date on their perception of the 'fairy tale'?" Luke suggested, hoping he didn't sound patronizing. _Am I going to be like this forever?_ He wondered at himself, _always doubting and always trying to balance things out? Not too pedantic and patronizing, but not too casual; not too close but close enough to really see people. _Then a pause_. There you go, making this about yourself again…_he sighed almost involuntarily

"Huh? Oh, sure. Sounds good, Luke," Leia said, apparently coming back from her own world of thoughts, "Probably just about time, too. Something about those Dantooinian flatcakes smells a little strange."

"If he put that dried meat stuff he brings from Kashyyyk in there we are _not_ letting him back in the galley," Luke stated firmly, trying to lighten the mood. Leia went along with his efforts,

"Deal," she told him.

"So," Luke began casually, after they had rescued the flatcakes from near-burning (and other calamities) and eaten quite a few of them, "what's going on with this whole fairy tale thing?"

"_You should seriously consider being more in touch with the world outside of your meditations, Luke_," Chewie rumbled with laughter, "_it's been in the holonews for weeks!_" The wookiee figured that if he was ever going to catalyze a confrontation between brother and sister about the near-engagement of who he still thought of as "Han's Princess" to that arrogant Prince, it might as well be now, while they would be stuck together for a few days more, which would force them to work it out before Leia faced Han again. _If he's still alive_, Chewie reminded himself. Then: _he has to be_. He performed some thought-repression of his own in order to follow the conversation.

"I'll overlook that one, Chewie," Luke quipped, choosing to keep the mood light. _Good move_, Chewie thought, _maybe it will take longer for the Princess to get defensive about it, this way_. Arguing with the Princess, he'd observed from the numerous times Han had done it, was sometimes more complicated and strategic even than the most delicate game of dejarik. Then again, arguing with Han was something like ramming one's head repeatedly into a chunk of especially hard transparisteel: you could see the right answer waiting calmly on the other side of the transparisteel, but you couldn't for the life of you get it through Han's stubborn head intact. He couldn't decide which he preferred. _But hopefully I'll have plenty of time to observe them together and make a decision_, he remarked to himself, praying that he wasn't being overly optimistic.

Leia sighed.

"I don't even know where to start, Luke," she said despondently, obviously going over her own pain-filled and turmoil-ridden memories of the past few weeks.

"You know the basics…or, at least, the truth of them. What the media has going on out there is quite another story," she paused to laugh dryly, "and even I can't keep track of that one."

"The truth? I don't know about that…I doubt anyone but you knows the real truth," Luke said, trying to play the subtle psychologist. It never would have worked on his considerably more experienced sister, had she not been so distracted. As the situation was, his statement had the desired effect.

_Nobody but me knows the real truth? It's possible…but do _I_ even know the real truth? Maybe no one does. Maybe there is no truth…just illusions…oh, shut up, Leia. You sound like some philosophizing hermit,_ she grumbled mentally. _Then again, it's not like I've seen the truth anywhere around here lately. Maybe I'll just have to settle for the illusion_.

"It does seem like a fairy tale," she sighed, partly to stop her thoughts, which she deemed pointless, and partly to continue the conversation, which suddenly seemed pointless as well. Chewie refrained from muttering something that might have been taken the wrong way and shoved a piece of flatcake into his mouth, chewing vigorously, as if that would help relieve the tension in the room and in their lives. When had things gotten tense between him and Luke and Leia, anyway?

Luke twirled his fork in his hand and pushed pieces of marginally soggy flatcake around on his plate, staring into it as if it were actually something interesting.

"Maybe life's not supposed to be a fairy tale," he mumbled, wondering how Leia was going to take that.

"Maybe," she said cautiously, not looking at him. What did he mean? _And what do I mean? What seems like a fairy tale? Me and Han: the princess and the scoundrel turned good; or me and Isolder: the princess and her prince? And which one does Luke disapprove of?_ Suddenly, the conversation (as short as it had been) and the thoughts it brought with it were too much effort for her, and she dropped her utensils somewhat suddenly onto her plate with a clank that raised the other two heads in the room from where they'd been staring uncomfortably into their plates.

"I've got a lot of work to do, and I'm really tired," she mumbled, thinking as she said it that it had to be the most pathetically clichéd and unbelievable excuse ever known to the galaxy. She shoved everything into the washer quickly, almost clumsily, and almost ran out of the room. Inexplicably, her eyes filled with tears as she rushed down the short hallway to her bunkroom at the end of it. _What the hell is wrong with you, Leia?_ She demanded of herself, _can't you just do the right thing and stop questioning. And for gods' sake, stop crying all the time!_ She threw herself onto the bunk in a manner that she'd not done almost since she had been a young adolescent on Alderaan, frustrated with her life. _Sure. No problem. Now who's going to volunteer to tell me what the right thing is?_ And the question she'd been torturing herself with for weeks now sounded so familiar and so overwhelming that it almost made her physically sick, so she cleared all rational thought out of her mind and attempted to will herself to sleep.

Isolder, alone in his Battle Dragon, happened to be thinking of Leia, but would have been completely shocked at the picture she now made. Well, perhaps "happened to be thinking of" was not the correct phrase. He'd been passing the long, lonely hours by imagining Leia, himself with Leia, Leia on Hapes, Leia as queen, and Leia as the mother of their children. None of those particular daydreamings involved a distraught Leia with a tearstained face and rumpled clothes, collapsed on a narrow bunk. The Leia of his imagination always smiled, was always radiantly happy and healthy, even after giving birth to their imagined children. He was particularly fond of that image: Leia with perfectly coiffed hair, lying in a sumptuous bed, wearing an equally sumptuous dressing gown, holding a perfect daughter in her perfect arms. The next ruler of Hapes. Now he just needed to figure out some names for their children (of course, they'd have many children) so that _he_ could make the decision for once, without his mother butting in as she usually did. Well, maybe she'd have a little more respect for him after this, even if he _was_ only a son. It wasn't every day one brought home Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, of the Imperial Senate, and of the highest echelons of Rebel Alliance/New Republic leadership for ones bride.

He stretched his legs in the luxury of the comparatively roomy Battle Dragon. _She'll be so glad to be a Hapan_, he thought happily, _even the ships are better there. Take an X-Wing, for example. Not nearly as much room for the legs, you can't move around at all, you can't make the chair lean back, and you can't preserve any decent food. And Hapan food is much better prepared than any other kind…and our scenery and riches could rival that of any planet…and our soldiers are the strongest and most skilled…and soon enough we'll have the galaxy's most beautiful Princess as our Queen Mother_.

From Isolder's point of view, things couldn't get much better. But maybe that was because, as a son of the infamous Ta'a Chume, he'd learned to suppress self-doubt- or any kind of doubt, for that matter- better than most.

_Right. That went well, Skywalker_, Luke was berating himself, slowly putting his dishes into the auto-washer. _I think it's safe to say you can cross off 'jedi-therapist' as a possible career path…damn it, but it's not supposed to take therapy skills to talk to your own sister! Well…there's always lunch…and dinner…and tomorrow…and all the days until we get to wherever-it-is. _He attempted to reassure himself. Involuntarily, he glanced at the chrono mounted precariously on a shelf. Suddenly, it seemed to be going faster than it ever had before, and he saw the time he had to help Leia diminishing quickly, each second gone so quickly, and nothing accomplished in it. And his hope that the situation could be repaired was beginning to be just about as precarious as that chrono's perch.

_That's right, Skywalker, always fix everything- that's the Jedi way. But maybe this is the first thing you just can't fix_…_too bad it's probably one of the most important…_

He tried not to bang the dishes too loudly so as not to irritate the other occupants of the small ship. Chewie handed him his plate silently and clumped out of the galley to go take out _his_ frustration on some unfortunate piece of machinery.

Han, for his part, was far removed, both physically and mentally, from the distress his would-be rescuers were experiencing. As he awoke with a pounding headache for the second time in two days (or was it two days? He couldn't really be sure,) he reflected that it was starting to feel familiar. That thought was closely followed by the observation that it didn't get any better for becoming a habit.

He didn't even try to move this time, knowing that it would only increase his discomfort. Instead, he concentrated on opening his eyes slowly, gently allowing them to adjust to the dim light before even attempting to look around. Right away, his smuggler's instincts of absorbing a situation within seconds taking over, he noticed that his present surroundings were markedly different from the one's in which he'd found himself upon his last painful awakening. For one, the ceiling, which was closer than before, was not the hard stone he'd looked up into last time. It seemed to be made of some rough fabric thick enough to keep the light out. And yet, it wasn't so dark inside wherever-he-was that he couldn't see. Deciding not to dwell on that particular phenomenon, he inched his head to the side ever so slowly to see what the walls were made of. When the waves of dizziness stopped crashing through him, he observed that they were made of the same material. And it was letting in a little light. _Not that I really care. What I really need is to get out of here_.

Continuing his careful study of his surroundings, he noticed that he was lying on a considerably softer surface than he had been yesterday (or that morning…or whenever it had been), and that he was covered with some sort of equally soft blanket. There was other furniture in the room, but he had only dimly perceived it when a part of the wall flapped open and the same girl as before (_Teneniel Djo? Is that what she said her name was?_) stepped through, along with a lot of light that made him cringe and groan.

"You just made my headache a million times worse, kid," he told her, remarking to himself that talking had about the same effect. _Won't be trying that again unless I have a damn good reason_, he decided.

"Food. You," the girl said briskly, setting down what appeared to be rather crudely fashioned bowl on a table next to whatever Han was lying on. (It couldn't quite be called a bed, in his opinion…maybe a cot.) He didn't think she would understand if he explained to her that even the thought of food or anything related to it gave him the urge to vomit rather violently all over her, probably exploding his head in the process, and therefore making for a somewhat messy cleanup.

"Food. No sick. You," she elaborated. _The food won't make me sick? Or I'm not really sick anyway so I should eat it? Or it'll make me better? Or none of the above and she doesn't actually know any Basic?_ Within two seconds, it didn't matter anyway, because the girl had cupped the bowl against his mouth and was pouring a surprisingly large proportion of its contents skillfully down his throat, so that he forgot to comment sarcastically that this was actually drink, not food.

"Food fix whuffa bad," she explained to him, looking into his somewhat dazed face. Despite his headache and overall misery, he couldn't help asking for clarification.

"The food will fix the whuffa, which is bad? Or the food is bad and will make the whuffa bad? Or are you just blabbering about nothing? And what the hell is a whuffa, anyway?" he asked, half rising off his cot. He collapsed back as arrows of pain pierced through the waves of it that were already washing over him. The girl grinned slightly, a hard grin that didn't really have the lighting-up effect that most grins had.

"Whuffa…poison?" she said, as if trying out the word for the first time. Then, more assuredly, "food fix."

"Are you asking or telling?" he demanded acidly, reminiscent of the way some long-forgotten tutorial droid had done in his faraway childhood. He was rewarded by another stern grin and another volley of arrows through his head.

"Whuffa poison. You. Food fix," she said, piecing the words together and adding some pulling motions, imitations of what he had done with the white snake/rope thing what seemed like a long time ago.

Through considerable effort on both their parts, the girl finally enabled Han to understand that the white "snake/rope thing" was called a whuffa and was invaluably useful to their culture. Unfortunately, its skin was also poisonous to the touch- not poisonous enough to kill anyone, but poisonous to make them sick for a substantial amount of time. Which was why they usually used their slaves, which were all men for some inexplicable reason, to extract whuffas from the ground, as opposed to using more important members of society. And the reason there were so many of these slaves was that usually one couldn't pull a whuffa in its entirety out of the ground before fainting first, so it usually took a team, with each man taking over when his predecessor passed out. These men could later be revived by drinking a mixture of the grindings of a certain plant and of the whuffa's blood, which had to be drained out to make it suitable for use, anyway. Whuffa ropes could be used to lash prisoners, making them faint, or their hides could be ground up and sprayed on prisoners, also making them faint, or…well, a number of other uses that all involved whuffa hides and fainting and that Han was too annoyed to bother to figure out.

Or something to that general effect.

When these explanations were finished, the girl left the room- or what Han had decided to call a tent- letting another burst of light in that made anything of Han's headache that had diminished while they had been talking come back in a rush. He lay back gingerly and tried to doze off…to no avail.

It was only moments later when the girl reappeared with someone (a woman) who looked very official and ceremonial to Han's practiced eye- practiced from attending all those official ceremonies with Leia all those times…but he couldn't dwell on that now. _Before I can get Leia back, I have to get out of this damned place_…

"This: king," Teneniel Djo told him. Han didn't bother to correct her, knowing she probably wouldn't understand. "Teneniel Djo talk. You. King." She pointed to herself and then to Han and the "king" woman. Then the she said something in that rapid, harsh language of theirs. Both of them looked at Han for a moment. The woman talked for a long time, and then Teneniel Djo seemed to think for a minute. Apparently the woman's entire discourse could be reduced to:

"You…important good. Whuffa Hunter."

Han nodded, trying to keep his facial expression neutral. If this woman was the local big shot, it wouldn't do to be rude. _Not if I want to get out of here anytime soon…all it would take was another whiff of that whuffa stuff_…

The woman looked at him as if giving him the opportunity to say something. When it became apparent that he had nothing to contribute, she launched into another long tirade about something or other. Or, at least, it sounded to Han like a tirade. Their language was so hard-sounding anyway that for all he knew she could have been talking about the nice weather they'd been having lately.

"You…go to want…all where want," Teneniel Djo translated the whole dialogue into seven succinct (and cryptic) words. Han's heart rose hesitantly in his chest. Could they be setting him free? He pointed to himself and then to the door. Both women nodded enthusiastically.

"Much whuffa hunter. Important good. Go to want," Teneniel Djo reiterated. Han didn't hesitate this time, and got up, ignoring the pounding it caused in his head. Teneniel Djo held something out to him as he passed by her to get to the door. He looked down at the proffered package.

"Food," she explained, and he took it.

"Thanks, kid," he told her, "thanks." And then he flipped the portion of the wall that was cut out to be a door and savored his first moment of freedom by breathing deeply the scent of almost-fresh air and trying not to faint from the lingering effects of the whuffa poison and quick movements he'd just executed. _That was easy_, he thought to himself. S_ort of_.


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note**: Hello, everyone. I'm desperately sorry it took me so long to update this again. To make a long story short, I took on more than was strictly sane my freshman year at college, and then had to deal with the consequences. Now it's summer, though, so I should be able to update with some regularity. My most profound apologies to you all. And to answer my wonderful reviewers:

_Eileen Blazer_: Aw, you're so kind. I think it's probably good that you feel kind of angry at Leia. She's not doing it on purpose, but still… And I'm glad you like my portrayal of Luke. He's the one I'm having the most trouble with, so it's good that someone likes him. It's always struck me as kind of crazy that he goes from whiney farm-boy to completely-in-control Jedi in the space of four years, without even having finished his training. So I'm trying to bring up his uncertainties again. Anyway, thanks so much for your review!

_GreatOne_: Teehee, Han as Teneniel Djo's personal slave definitely brings some cough interesting images to mind…thanks for the review, though!

_From-Heaven2Earth_: Yup, well, that's exactly the feeling I was going for, so I'm glad that's what you thought! Thanks for the review and I'm sorry to have kept you waiting for the rest of it!

_Levisrictusias_: Goodness, I hope you didn't disintegrate yet! And I definitely promise to continue this story to completion, no matter how horribly slow I am at it! Thanks so much for the review!

_ME_: Aw, I'm glad to hear that. Thanks!

_Kalena_: Aren't the movies amazing? I love them to death. I'm glad you decided to check out the fanfic, too, and thank you so much for reading mine and reviewing!

_Padme_: Aw, well, definitely don't let that stop you from writing your own revision, too! I'd love to read it if you do! Thanks for the review!

_Freetrader_: Well, I'm glad I was able to make someone feel that intensely about it! Please keep reading; it'll make you feel better (eventually)! Thanks so much for your review!

_Crazytook:_ Yes, that definitely does help! That's exactly the problem I was having, because he seems to transition, like I said to someone else, so quickly from whiney Luke to super-calm Jedi Luke, and it kind of seems unnatural and unlikely to me. So I'm hoping to make him kind of past the superficial covering of calm Luke to a more human Luke with questions about his future. I know it sounds kind of weird to have him doubting himself again, but I explain it to myself like this: he got his Jedi powers under control with Yoda and subsequent practicing, and that made him superficially calm and collected for a while. But then the incredible responsibility of being the last Jedi really sank in, and he started doubting himself because of that. Hopefully that makes some sort of sense. Let me know! And thank you so, so much for your advice; it really helps!

Anyway, everyone, I hope you enjoy! Many thanks to all my readers who are coming back to read this after such a long hiatus; I really, really appreciate it. Please leave me comments so I can improve; it really means a lot to me when you care enough to do that! Oh, and on a side note: my apologies for the really stupid "X X X X" that I had to use to make scene changes. I've been using asterisks and dashes in the past but I just realized that ff.n doesn't pick up on those. Oops!

**Chapter 10**

The shock as their little ship was yanked out of hyperspace two hours early was enough to send Leia sliding off her narrow bunk and to the cold, metallic floor with a thud. The angry growls coming from the direction of what passed as the lounge of the ship told her that Chewie had probably been asleep and experienced a similar jolt. Luke must have been awake and on duty in the cockpit, because he appeared in the doorway of the bunkroom several seconds later and offered a hand to help her up.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, apart from a lovely bruise or two, I should be fine," she told him dryly, following up with a question in what Luke recognized as her getting-down-to-business tone, "but that doesn't matter- what's going on?"

"Um, we seem to have fallen out of hyperspace," Luke admitted. Chewie, with his superior amounts of experience in this department, was already expressing his explicit opinions about the ship, its makers, their parents, and all of their descendents for generations to come, in the loud tones brother and sister now heard emanating from the cockpit.

"Hey, Chewie, it was the best we could do on short notice, remember?" Luke reminded before turning to the console in hopes that it would reveal something clarifying to him, "so where are we?"

Chewie answered instead. They had all trooped into the tiny cockpit by now, and while Leia had been staring somewhat absently beyond her brother to the stars, not really quite awake enough to thrust forbidden thoughts of Han from her mind yet, Chewie had already analyzed their position. Leia snapped back to attention as she caught a few stray words in Chewie's answering growls and grunts.

"Wait, what did he say?" she asked, turning back to her brother.

"That we're about where we're supposed to be," said Luke slowly and somewhat hesitantly. Apparently he was just as puzzled by that state of affairs as she was, and both turned back to look at Chewie. He verified their understanding of his language and pointed at several key markings on the chart and navicomputer for further proof.

"Strange," Luke murmured, looking back out at the stars as if he expected them to have labeled themselves while he had been trying to determine their identity. Leia's mind was on something else entirely.

"So where's the Falcon?" she said, her heart beating slightly faster than it had been before. She restrained herself from casting her eyes out over her brother's shoulders, as if she could find Han just by looking hard enough into the stars. Luke was silent, not wanting to say something wrong and upset her. Chewie had no such scruples, being almost as worried as she was.

"Well, the coordinates of his distress signal say she should be right around…here," Chewie said, allowing his paw to skim over the navicomp's screen to come to rest on a precise location not too far from where they were suspended among the stars. It took everyone a moment to those particular coordinates were encompassed by a planet.

"Oh. He's on a planet," Luke thought aloud, "that's good, right?"

It was Chewie's turn to be uneasily silent. Sometimes it took a longtime spacer to understand certain things…like the fact that you were just safer on your own ship, no matter how nice a planet might look from space. Leia left her concern unvoiced as well- from her point of view, it was all too easy to be yanked out of hyperspace in the middle of the night and then crash into a planet's orbit and be sucked down to the ground all before you even had a chance to figure out why you weren't still hurtling smoothly through hyperspace in the first place. She tried not to picture Han as a pile of moldering ashes mixed with fragments of his ship. _No, his ship was in good enough shape to send a distress signal_, she reminded herself quickly. Her head filled instead with images of Han stuck under a piece of furniture or a crate that hadn't been properly latched down, suffocating and starving before she worked up the courage to come find him. She did her best to clear her mind of those images, blinking her eyes preventatively against the tears of self-blame that threatened.

"Well, I guess we're gong to have to land and aim for those coordinates as well as possible, then," Luke said. Still concentrating on clearing her mind of unwanted thoughts, Leia nodded absently. Chewie had just begun to growl something about their method of approach when Leia remembered.

"Isolder!" she said suddenly, her eyes opening wide. Luke glanced at her, remembering their fellow traveler just as suddenly as she had. Chewie growled something none too complementary about the Hapan prince that may or may not have had something to do with him being lost in hyperspace for the rest of his days, but both twins chose to ignore him. Leia stepped over to the comm. Console and quickly adjusted it to his frequency, trying to ignore the fact that her fingers automatically brought the dial to rest on Han's in the seconds before her brain had a chance to take over. She reddened slightly, blinking rapidly to clear her head again and ducking it a little so no one would see. He answered right away.

"Leia," his voice came through the comm. It was a little crackly, but the concern was clearly audible and Leia's chest seemed to contract on hearing it, even as she cringed inside. She hadn't gotten used to his use of her first name so familiarly, yet, and here he was being concerned for her welfare on a level more personal than she was really ready to deal with yet.

"Leia," he repeated when she didn't answer right away, "are you all right?" She cleared her throat and spoke in a surprisingly distinct voice.

"We're all fine here," she said, something inside of her hoping that he noticed the change in pronouns and the reprimand it conveyed, "how about you? Did your ship come through all right?" The doubts she had been battling in the past few days flooded into her head all at once. She was considering marrying this man quite seriously and yet here she was sending him barbed comments when he had shown only concern towards her.

"Yes; it was built to stand plenty more than this, believe me," he told her, his joking tone laced with hesitation. Leia scolded herself silently. _Stop being so ridiculous, Leia._ Chewie growled something about the build of Isolder's ship and compared it not particularly favorably, with that of the Falcon; both twins chose to ignore him once more.

"I'm sending you my coordinates; you send me yours, all right?" he said. Luke bent over the neighboring console to initiate the transmission.

"All right, well, let's-"Leia began after having glanced at his coordinates. They weren't that far apart, and seeing concrete numbers helped the leader within her take over. Before she had a chance to finish her sentence, however, the ship lurched and Isolder's voice came through the comm, even more static-ridden than before.

"Leia! We're being sucked into orbit, and the orbit of this planet is kind of erratic according to my navicomp, so tell your pilot to-"he began, before he in turn was interrupted by Chewbacca. None of them could ignore him this time; his meaning was far too clear for that.

"_I **know** what to do with an erratic orbit_," he growled hostilely, adding a few mildly insulting insinuations about Isolder's capabilities mostly under his breath as he shoved Luke into the copilot's position and wedged himself into the pilot's seat. Leia took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment, trying to convince herself that she truly was sorry that she couldn't apologize to Isolder for Chewie's behavior at that particular moment. Luckily, she was distracted by the continual tossing and turning of the ship before that endeavor became too depressingly unsuccessful. Apologizing to the man who had come between her and Han when something might now have happened to Han was really not one of her top priorities at the moment.

"Lock down the stabilizers," came Chewie's voice through the haze of her mind. It was to Han's credit that her eyes flicked automatically to the area of the console where stabilizers were supposed to be. She thrust forcefully out of her mind the fond memory of Han running his hand through his hair in annoyance after trying to teach her some basic knowledge of mechanics and only half succeeding.

Luke had flipped the switch to lock down the stabilizers, and the ship had stopped jolting quite so much. It did make it easier to think, that was for sure. She glanced at the location screen and noticed what Chewie was doing. It tore at her insides, but she made herself say it:

"Chewie, just try to land us in one piece so we can use this ship to get back off this planet. It won't be worth it trying to land close to the Falcon if we're going to be dead or with no means of getting out of here when we do find it." She didn't quite manage to make herself tell him to try to follow Isolder. Hopefully Isolder would have the good sense to follow them. He did have the superior ship, after all, making it his responsibility…sort of. Chewie growled his assent, probably realizing that it had cost her as much to make the suggestion as it was costing him to follow it.

Leia tensely did her best to steady her breath and focused her mind in its entirety on watching Chewie bring the ship carefully down through the planet's atmosphere as if she could lend him her concentration just by watching him. She wished she knew more about this sort of thing so that she could offer more concrete help. Luke sat almost as motionless in his seat, all of him straining to catch Chewie's next curt order, and then to comprehend it and act on it as quickly as possible. Chewie, for his part, seemed to be watching both the scene outside the transparisteel viewport and the navicomp's screen with a calm possession of himself that belied the adrenaline rushing within. His large furry paws moved over the console with a dexterity that would probably have surprised those who didn't know him as well as the twins did, and slowly the ship came down to settle safely, if a little bit roughly, on the vegetation-covered ground.

Leia let out a quiet sigh of relief and wiped the sweat that had beaded on her upper lip away quickly. She offered Luke a shaky smile in return for his attempt at a reassuring one and Chewie twisted in his seat to look at them both as if challenging them to find fault with his skills.

"That was excellent Chewie, really amazing," she said, and he grunted his appreciative response. Something beeped on the console and all three turned to look at it. A small white blip appeared on the graphical interpretation of the surrounding area.

"Looks like Isolder made it okay," Luke said, making his tone as completely neutral as he possibly could in order to avoid upsetting either of the ship's other occupants. Leia nodded equally neutrally and Chewie, for once, refrained from commenting. It was possibly because he was already checking over the ship's fuel reserves and other mechanically related things as thoroughly as he could without actually going into the ship's belly and examining the state of things for himself. That could wait until after they had a bite to eat, he decided. He didn't kid himself that they were going to meet up with Han and be ready to take off again within the next ten minutes; that was for sure. No, they probably were better off having a proper dinner and even getting some much-needed sleep before they ventured outside to start looking for Han, he reflected. He wasn't sure he'd be able to convince the Princess of that, though. For that matter, he wasn't even really sure he'd be able to convince himself.

"Okay, well, our ship doesn't seem to have atmospheric sensors so we'll take your word for it," Luke was saying into the comm. Leia was nodding anxiously behind him, eager to get started.

"Isolder, your ship wouldn't happen to have those newer life-sensors, would it?" she asked, referring to one of the more recent and impressive technological developments. These had taken some time in getting approval from the relevant Senate committee on the grounds that they might in some way be used to discriminate against particular species, especially since their ability to differentiate between humanoids and other broad categories of aliens had been one of their most highly advertised features. _If Isolder's managed to install one on his ship, though, I'll make sure they get to the top of the pile_, Leia promised silently, thinking of the huge stacks of issues the Committees were constantly besieged by.

"Well, yes, but I don't think it's going to help us," he said in a regretful tone that Leia had to give him credit for, "I'm detecting humanoids all over the place...kind of in clumps."

Leia took a deep breath, trying to get over her disappointment. Though she didn't want to admit it, she had been half expecting to be holding Han in her arms tonight. The disappointment was almost more than she could bear, but she fought it back with the thought that she wasn't supposed to be contemplating Han in her arms, not if she was going still planning to even consider marrying Isolder. With all of the other thoughts churning around in her mind, she didn't pick up on the fact that she had referred to it as merely _considering_, not concretely _doing_.

Instead, she let a silent, but no less anguish-filled for its silence, yell of _Oh, Han_, escape from her mind, forgetting for a moment that she and Han were not alone in the universe. Luke winced from where he was carrying on the conversation with Isolder as his sister's anguished cry reverberated in his mind.

"Okay, we'll see you in a few minutes, then," he said into the comm, concluding his conversation. He came over to stand by his sister.

"We'll find him," Luke said, putting a hand on her shoulder and bending his head down slightly to look into her eyes. Like most people who offered reassurance in difficult situations, he wished he could convince himself of what he was saying. Leia nodded and smiled, being strong for her brother the way he was being strong for her, both of them pretending for the sake of the other and both aware of it. She took a deep breath.

"I'm going to go look up how long planetary rotation is here," she said, half meaning it and half using the words to cloak her need to leave the room and compose herself. A swipe at her eyes administered with the back of her hand and two deep breaths later, she flipped on her datapad and her usual sense of calm determination returned to her…or, as much of it as she could manage, given the situation.

And that was just it, wasn't it? When the situation concerned Han, how could she possibly be calm, any more than she had been when it concerned Alderaan, or any more than she would be if it ever concerned Luke? She sighed deeply, understanding the truth in the core of her being, hidden there, waiting for her to uncover and accept it.

_Well, it's not like it matters right now_, she thought with a mixture of wryness and sadness, _it won't really matter that I love him if we never find him, will it_?

X X X X

When she emerged from her cabin, she was her usual composed self once more, and Luke breathed a sigh of relief. In the eight years (had it really been that long?) that he'd known his twin sister, he'd grown used to her being the strong, calm one, so that he could be the idealistic, somewhat brash young Jedi (well, brash until he had realized how much he could influence the course of future events and grown to doubt every possible action). It was unnerving to see her so affected by something so…human. _Well, _obviously_ she's human_, he thought, scoldingly to himself, shaking his head.

"The night cycle starts in less than an hour," she told them despondently. She took another deep breath, "so I guess we'll have to start looking tomorrow." Luke nodded.

"Guess so," he nodded, then did his best to bring a brighter expression to his face, "that gives us more time to plan out exactly where we want to start looking, right?"

Chewie growled his assent, crossed the small main cabin and leaned over the twins' shoulders to peer at the map Leia had brought up on the screen.

X X X X

Han, not wanting to admit that he was completely spent, but desperately in need of a break all the same, stopped and leaned, after checking for noticeable danger, against the trunk of a tree. Yes, that was right: a tree. How this planet had managed to go from desert to jungle-forest within an afternoon's walk, he wasn't quite sure. He was sure, however, that it was a welcome change. Or, at least, the shade had been, until the jungle had produced a bunch of roots for him to trip over. As a result, he'd been marching carefully for the past hour and a half (or so he estimated), lifting his feet absurdly high to avoid tangling them in the roots of the great trees that towered above him now and fervently hoping no one he knew would pass by and witness it.

He leaned over, his hands on his knees, and took a few moments to will his breathing to slow back to normal before straightening up and looking around. _Yeah, 'go where want' is all well and good_, he thought sarcastically, _but it doesn't change the fact that this damn planet has no damn stars to navigate by and too much jungle for them to do any good even if they did exist_.

Having traveled just far enough to collapse in the shade of the nearest rock in the desert-like landscape near where Teneniel Djo and her fellow clan-mates or whatever they considered themselves, and slept for most of the previous day and night, he had awoken just before dawn and noted that there were no discernable guiding sort of stars visible. He'd started off in what he really hoped was a straight line, and then just continued in that (hopefully) straight line until now. It had led him through the desert-like region and then through a rockier passage which had opened up into this jungle. And he was fairly sure he had landed the Falcon on something resembling plains…something he definitely hadn't encountered yet.

One more look around and upwards led him to conclude that it was definitely almost night again. His experienced side told him it was better to be spending the night somewhere sheltered and hidden, like this, where no one was likely to find him. And yet he had felt more secure on the open desert, where he would have been able to see any attacker from miles away. Of course, if he was asleep, that didn't really mean much, and being able to see the attacker wouldn't really help either, since he didn't have any weapons to speak of. It didn't stop a vague uneasiness at having to sleep here from creeping over him, though.

Sighing grumpily at this turn of events, he started clearing a space between two roots of branches and other debris before lining it roughly with the large leaves of some nearby plant (he really hoped it wasn't poisonous). Finally, he lay down uncomfortably in his nest of leaves (was he just imagining that itch on his bare arms and neck?) and reflected that, upon consideration, it was highly unlikely that anyone he knew had even heard of this place, let alone come close enough to see his marching antics. In fact, if anyone he knew had been there, he probably would have fallen at their knees and kissed their feet and begged for transport off this stupid rock.

_Solo, you're sounding completely ridiculous_, he thought to himself just before drifting off to some much-needed sleep_, if Leia could hear you now, she'd definitely go running in the other direction…even if that direction did lead to some soppy prince from gods-know-where_.


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note: **As usual, thanks so much to all who generously took the time to review! Keep reading, all!

_Latebloomer04_: Aw, thank you. I hope you enjoy the rest when you read the rest of it. As for the meeting between Teneniel Djo and Luke…grins mischievously you'll just have to wait and see!

_TheRealLeia_: Well, I'm updating as fast as I can…I'm going to be away for a month, so I won't be able to update, but hopefully I can get a lot of writing done for when I get back! And you definitely should read the original COPL- if only so that you can make fun of it with the rest of us!

_Erinya_: Aw, thank you! I'm glad you like it! And I definitely enjoyed writing the part about Chewie's reflections, too!

_KnightedRogue_: Wow, thank you so much! I'm honored to hear you say that my Han still reads like Han even while pulling out a whuffa. That _is_ pretty high praise. Seriously, though, I'm glad you like my characterizations, because I'm still working on those, so it's good to hear. Oh, if you're ever bored, I'd love to hear what exactly you liked (and didn't like) about my pacing, because I'm actually sort of going at random with pacing. It's something I haven't figured out yet, in anything I write.

_Ann_: I definitely do plan to continue- keep reading!

**Chapter 11:**

"I think we'll maximize our efficiency in covering this area by splitting up," Leia explained to her brother, Chewie, Isolder, and Threepio. She had pushed her cup of kaff back towards the center of the table and replaced it with her datapad, and was now planning out their search efforts and waving her almost untouched energy bar illustratively in the air. Luke nodded,

"Sounds good. Threepio can stay here and watch the ship and the rest of us can split up into two pairs. Chewie was about to open his mouth to say he would go with the Princess when Isolder spoke, beating him to it.

"Leia and I will cover this area to the east and a little to the north," he said, leaning familiarly around Leia and her energy bar to point at the map on her datapad. Chewie cringed on her behalf and nodded reluctantly.

"_All_ _right. Luke and I can go more towards the northwest and cover that area…" _he agreed, silently apologizing to Han for not ensuring his Princess' safety personally.

"Well, then, let's go," said Leia, standing up and wrapping the rest of her energy bar back into its packaging before tucking it into her pocket. Luke refrained from letting his jaw drop as she stood up, revealing the belt she was wearing around her waist. While he was well aware of how good a fighter she was, his mental image of her was more one of the peace-loving diplomat. The storm-trooper style belt that hung seemingly precariously on her slender hips and carried attached to it a blaster on either side as well as a basic medpac off center in the front, an emergency glow-rod next to it, and a pouch of ration cubes in the back.

"There're two more of these; I left them in the cockpit," she said, "Chewie, you'll be okay with your bowcaster and stuff, right? I don't think any of these are really your size."

Chewie nodded and Luke could see that he was stifling his surprise. Since Leia only understood his language to an extent, it wasn't as difficult for him as it had been for Luke. Isolder looked slightly uncomfortable at the idea of wearing two fully charged blasters on his person, a fact that Chewie did not miss and also did not bother to conceal his enjoyment of.

Leia barely waited until Isolder had buckled his belt on reluctantly before leading the way out of the ship. Despite the considerable advantage he had in the length of his limbs, Isolder had to jog a few feet to catch up with her so as not to lose her in the dense jungle growth. He batted some branches that Leia had hardly seemed to notice out of the way fractions of a second before they would have smacked his face. It was going to be a long day.

X X X X X

Isolder reflected, as they trudged back to the ship by the light of Leia's glow-rod, (his had run out because he'd lit it two and a half hours before they actually needed them to see) that even if he had been right about nothing else the entire day, he had been right about one thing. It had indeed been a very long day. Unfortunately, it had not been nearly as fruitful as so much trekking, sweating, and panting with exhaustion should have warranted.

He risked a glance at Leia, who was not in the best of moods. Her face was still the same mask of determination so fierce it almost bordered on anger, but some other things had crept into her expression, too. Worry was evident in the lines that creased her forehead. A headache manifested itself, Han would have noticed, in "that thing" she "did with her eyebrows". The dark circles under her eyes betrayed her tiredness for all to see; more than just the short sleep cycles and the discomfort of the crude bunk, it was a tiredness born of the nightmares that plagued the few hours she did allow herself for sleeping.

And Luke didn't look much better, Isolder decided as they finally came back within view of the ship. Luke, who had, Isolder guessed, sensed them coming, was waiting for them just outside the entrance hatch, a grim look on his face. Any hope that might have lit his sister's for just a moment disappeared as quickly as it had come.

"No luck, either, huh?" she asked, making herself be the one to say it first, to make it real. That way, she kept control over the situation and inflicted the pain of reality on herself instead of waiting for others to do it. Luke shook his head and put a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sure we'll find him tomorrow, though," he said. She nodded her thanks for the kindness of the thought at him, and leaned into his supportive arm, just a little bit. Isolder ached with longing to be the one she (or anyone, for that matter) allowed herself to lean on. He sighed, forgotten, and followed the twins up the access ramp into the dingy but warmly lit main cabin of the little ship, where their wookie had concocted something that was apparently supposed to pass as food. Leia smiled thankfully at the wookie and told him it smelled delicious (it didn't) and so Isolder did the same, at least not earning himself any angry or disappointed looks from her, even if positive ones had yet to come his way for the day.

"Hey," Luke said, his arm still around his sister, "come have a look at these things Chewie and I found today. We figure they're some kind of sign-post, but Chewie hasn't let me turn Threepio on to see for sure yet." That elicited a slight laugh from Leia, and for that Isolder was grateful.

X X X X X

Luke glanced surreptitiously around the scene around before reaching furtively into the ration cube pouch of the belt nearest to where he was sitting. He couldn't be sure, but he thought it might be his. In any case, he was too hungry to care one way or another. The "stew" Chewie had cooked them had been just a little less than edible, even after Leia had taken it back into the corner that passed as a galley on this ship and suspended it over the cooker to compensate for the fact that the chunks of what everyone assumed was some kind of non-toxic meat floating in it were still bright red. Chewie had growled his assurances that he hadn't meant to disgust them; they really needed to remember that wookies _liked_ their meat raw and obviously couldn't be expected to remember _every_ time they cooked that humans didn't. During the course of the friendly disagreement that ensued, Leia had forgotten to remove the stew from the cooker, which resulted in the meaty component of the dish turning a color that more resembled carbon-scoring on durasteel than anything else. In order not to insult either of the chefs, Isolder and Luke had been forced to at least pretend to enjoy the stew. Chewie, for some strange reason, had actually ended up enjoying it and declared, much to everyone's consternation, that he was going to try this type of cooking on all of his favorite dishes in the future. Leia had rolled her eyes at this and then brightly exclaimed that she still had half her energy bar left from breakfast that morning, which made Luke a little suspicious as to her assurances that she had eaten something during the long and grueling march she'd subjected herself and Isolder to during their search efforts. Isolder had diplomatically eaten his stew. Luke, less enthusiastic about diplomacy, had been left pretending, which resulted in his current state of hunger. So he looked around the room one more time, wondering if it would be easier to just call a few ration cubes to his hand using the Force.

Chewie was happily tinkering with some part of the ship that he had extracted from its belly. Luke felt confident that he was so engrossed in that that he wasn't likely to notice anything that went on around him short of actual danger. Sneaking ration cubes didn't really qualify as danger, Luke figured. Isolder, thankfully, had retired to his ship right after dinner. Luke wondered if he'd really meant it about being tired, or if he just needed to throw up. No…remembering the look on his face when he had arrived back at the ship with Leia, Luke suspected that he really was just that tired. And Leia, characteristically, was bent over her datapad, her shoulders hunched with fatigue, and two fingers pinching the bridge of her nose as if trying to ward off a headache that he knew she already had; he'd seen her slip half of a painkiller capsule into her water at dinner. He sighed. Sometimes there were better causes than his own stomach to consider. He retreated his hand back into his lap.

"Leia, why don't you go to bed and get some rest now?" he said in his kindest big brother voice, even though they still had no idea who was older. She glanced up at him, straightening her shoulders self-consciously in an effort to prove she wasn't really tired, and making him glad he'd made sure his hand was back in his lap before speaking, as she took in his position with one sweeping look.

"No, that's okay. I've got work to do; you go to bed and I'll take first watch," she answered in a flat voice before going back to her datapad and letting her shoulders hunch over again. She had insisted on setting up a system of watch duties for the three of them so that someone was always in the cockpit, monitoring the comm frequencies in case Han tried to get into contact with them.

"Chewie's already claimed first watch," he told her, trying to inject a little humor into his voice, "and I was wondering if I could use your datapad to check my messager before turning in." Leia looked up at him, quickly reading his brotherly concern and affection in his eyes, and gave a little half-smile as she nodded.

"Sure. Planning search routes for tomorrow doesn't amount to much since I don't know the terrain of this place anyway," she told him, sighing as she closed the images of vague maps she'd brought up on her screen. She handed him the datapad and kissed his forehead affectionately.

"Don't stay up too late," she said ironically. At least her sense of humor was still intact. Unless she had completely missed the irony. Luke shook his head as she left the room and looked down at her datapad. _Well, as long as it's here, I might as well check my messages for real, _he thought, flicking the machine's controller towards the messager program's symbol.

Several moments of waiting and flicking yielded a notice that told him he had twelve new messages. None of them looked interesting, aside from one that seemed to be from Mon Mothma's personal secretary herself. _Great_, thought Luke grumpily. He wasn't sure he really wanted to deal with that right now, so he scanned the other messages idly, wondering where these random people managed to get him personal messager code from. He squinted at one of the message titles. It was one of those weird Luke-the-savior messages he'd had Threepio translate just before all of the Isolder business had come up with, but it almost looked a little like…_hm…no, that would be _too_ weird_, Luke thought, peering even more closely at the strange script the title was written in.

"Hey, Chewie," he called softly, not wanting to wake his sister in case, by some strange stroke of luck, she'd managed to fall asleep right away, "can you grab those signpost things we brought back and come look at this."

Chewie growled an indication of mild annoyance at being interrupted, but exchanged the chunks of metal he was holding in his lap for the "signposts" and came over to stand behind Luke.

"Look at the script in this message's title and see if it looks like the script on these," Luke said, pointing to the message title and signposts in question. Chewie looked both over and shrugged. Anything other than wookie-script and Basic kind of looked all the same to him anyway. Luke flicked the controller to bring the full message into view and looked up at Chewie to see if had noticed anything.

"It doesn't look to you like the script on these, not even a little?" he asked.

Chewie looked closer.

"_Maybe_," he agreed.

"Well? Isn't that strange? I wonder what it could mean." Luke thought aloud, leaning his chin on his fists and looking back and forth from the "signpost things" to the datapad screen. Chewie sighed resignedly.

"_I guess maybe you'd better turn Threepio back on after all. He can at least tell you if it is really the same script_."

Ten minutes later, Luke was shaking his head. Threepio was still babbling on- had been, for the past seven minutes and counting- but Luke had become quite adept at pulling the crucial bits of information out of Threepio's overly eloquent deluges of words. The crucial bit of information here was that the two scripts did, in fact, match.

_As if we didn't have enough to worry about_, he thought, refraining from rolling his eyes. _Really, now. We still haven't found Han. Even when we do find him, there'll still be hell to pay somehow, no matter what Leia ends up doing. And now these stupid savior messages turn out to be coming from people related to whoever lives or lived here…or maybe whoever lives here themselves. Well, Skywalker, this is what you wanted, wasn't it? You wanted to help everybody out. You've got it, now, buddy, _he finally said to himself.

Chewie growled a query, reminding Luke that he wasn't the only one in the room. Somewhere during Luke's reverie, Threepio had stopped speaking, perhaps having sensed, for once, that no one was really listening, and now both he and Chewie were looking at Luke inquisitively. Or, as inquisitive as a protocol droid could look anyway, which, Luke would have thought had his mind not been completely occupied with other things, was pretty darned inquisitive, when you considered that they were made of immobile plasteel.

"Well, that sure is weird, Threepio," he said, figuring the droid deserved at least some modicum of recognition for his services, "I guess we'll have to look into that after we find Han, huh?"

Chewie nodded, "_You get off to bed, now; I have first watch, remember_?"

"Thanks. I'll do that. Call me if anything comes up and I'll come take over in three hours."

X X X X X

Leia lay back against her pillows, having finally slowed her breathing after her latest nightmare and glanced at the clock. Still Chewie's watch. She hadn't even been in bed for two hours yet, and she'd already had a nightmare. _Great._ Pulling the covers closer around herself, she imagined warm, familiar arms encircling her, keeping her safe. Gentle puffs of breath on the back of her neck. Her back pressed up against the heat of another body. And a contented smile on her face.

No matter how she tried keeping a frame of brown hair and a lopsided grin, even in sleep, on the face behind her, though it kept slightly changing into a smoother, younger one with a sparkling smile and blond hair. She shook off the imaginary arms, frowning in a mix of frustration and disgust, and wiggled to the other side of the narrow bunk, refraining from letting loose the angry wail that was building inside her. Honestly, if she couldn't even take comfort in her own private daydreams without him invading her space…

_Fine, we'll try it that way_, she grumbled mentally. She closed her eyes and pictured herself standing on an ornate dais in an even more ornate room, accepting a heavily bejeweled crown from an elderly woman who seemed to emanate power. The room was filled with people who resembled the strong, graceful man at her side. Except for one corner, which was occupied by people who resembled the man who had raised her, who had filled her childhood with joy. Now, in return, she had filled these people's hearts with joy- it showed in their smiling faces and in their eyes, bright with happy tears. She imagined a beautiful planet somewhere, filled with those people and their children and their thriving happiness. Perhaps herself, even, taking time from her duties as Queen Mother to visit her own people. Riding around in a speeder, most likely accompanied by several children with heads full of soft bond curls, all smiling and waving. Try as she might, though, she couldn't picture a real smile on her face in that daydream, not the kind that came all the way from down where she supposed her heart resided. Besides, this side of the bed was cold, anyway. Frowning, she moved back to the side still warm from the heat of her body, and back to her previous imaginings. This time, the brown hair stayed brown. The tiny scar remained on his chin. And the lopsided smile seemed to shine only for her. It was the only face she could fall asleep to.

She did so a moment later, having been only half-awake during the entire process. She never would have permitted herself such dreams had she been fully awake, after all. Even in the wake of her recent realization and acceptance of the fact that she could never be truly happy without Han, the issue still remained: was her happiness worth that of the entire population of Alderaan refugees, especially after the way she had failed them so horribly before?


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note:** Apologies, as usual, for the tardiness of this chapter. And many, many thanks, as usual, to the kind people who took the time to leave reviews. I appreciate it so, so much.

_GreatOne_: Heehee, my thoughts exactly!

_Cooking Spray_: Why, thank you. I'm glad you think my characterizations are at least a little better than Mr. Wolverton's. (I really wish they had gotten someone a little more appreciative of the Han/Leia relationship to write that novel, but…oh, well.)

_DrScully42_: Aw, thank you! As to the number of chapters…I'd say I'm about halfway finished. Halfway or two thirds, I'm not sure. There are still a good ten chapters or so to come, though, I think.

_The Real Leia_: Thanks! Well, Han & Leia fans like to make fun of the original COPL because, in my opinion, the plot was presented in such a way as to be completely unrealistic and improbable and everyone seemed so out of character that I personally had to keep looking at the front cover to make sure I was really reading Star Wars and not some really weird romance novel. I'm not entirely sure you can get the COPL text online for free…but you could try your local library; I know mine has it.

_CrAzYhOrSeGiRl88_: Aw, thank you so much! You're very kind. And I shall endeavor to update as often and as quickly as possible.

_DarthLady14_: Thanks and I definitely plan to!

_Stormygurlz_: Thanks so much! I'll do my best with updating, and I'm really flattered that you think my characters have depth!

**Chapter 12:**

The table at their evening meal was a somber one after a full standard week of fruitless searching. Well…fruitless might not be exactly accurate. Chewie had discovered some interesting species of pant that had turned out to be edible. Or, at least, non-toxic. The humans had concluded from the adventure that edible was another matter entirely. And all had found evidence of the civilization that they assumed had made Luke's signpost…and, chances were, sent him the strange messages.

None of that changed the fact that no one had seen so much as a footprint in indication that Han might have passed through. Luke risked a glance at his sister (she had been growing steadily more volatile as the past few days had worn on) and sighed. Supporting her head on her fist, she was chewing desolately on the stew Chewie had made out of this whatever-it-was plant and staring down into her bowl, obviously not seeing it.

"I was thinking tomorrow we could take the first few hours of daylight to try to set up some kind of visual signal or something, in case he's wandering around in the forest or something," he proposed, saying the first thing that came through his head in a half desperate effort to focus her attention some something semi-positive.

Leia looked up at him slowly, still chewing on one of the leaves in her stew. Luke had to admit that even if you were taking an active interest in your meal, the leaves weren't exactly tender.

"Won't that lead any other people on this planet to us, too?" Isolder asked reasonably, effectively quashing the conversation. Given a few seconds reflection, Luke had to concede that if the natives should happen to be unfriendly (and there was a very decent chance of that), attracting them to their only means of transportation with no one left behind to guard it was probably not the cleverest of plans. Leia nodded silently and went back to staring at her stew.

As had become their custom, they parceled out the area each pair was to cover the next day, and that was the end of any pretense of conversation for the evening.

X X X X X

Two standard hours later, Isolder had retired to his Battle Dragon for the night, Leia, whose turn it was to have third watch again, had gone to her bunkroom, and Luke and Chewie were left in the main hold. Luke was reluctant to go to sleep when Chewie had taken first watch and was likely to "forget" to wake Luke up for half of his shift. Of course, Luke understood that that meant he could reasonably avoid waking Leia up until just the last hour or so of her shift, but it still made him feel a little guilty. That night, it turned out to be for the better anyway.

"_I_ _found more traces of the natives today_," Chewie said without preamble after a few minutes of clearing the remnants of their meal off the table together. Luke looked over at him quickly.

"When?"

"_After we all got back, just as it was getting dark. When I went out to collect leaves, remember? I went into a little clump of trees and plants and stuff to try to get to the more tender leaves and I found some footprints. Signs of a struggle, too. And I'm pretty sure there was some kind of blood on the leaves_," he concluded.

"Blood on the leaves we ate?" Luke asked, having processed that, with a disturbing flip of his stomach, before anything else.

"_No. Blood on the tender leaves. That's why ours were like plasteel_."

Luke chuckled briefly, glad to hear that at least Chewie hadn't been under the impression that he was feeding them "the tender ones". Having satisfied his curiosity in that department, he turned his mind to more important things.

"Human blood?" he asked, wondering if they could determine from that information that the natives were of a humanoid race even before he thought of Han. Chewie blinked.

"_I don't know. We don't have analysis equipment here, so I thought it would be useless to take some. It wasn't enough blood to be fatal to a human, and it didn't go off on a trail, so if it was a human, chances are they stopped the bleeding before they lost too much blood_…"

Luke picked up the train of thought:

"But whatever it was, it means that somewhere there's something dangerous enough to cause something else to lose blood, because I can't think of any situation in which someone would loose blood voluntarily."

"_So I was thinking we shouldn't tell Leia. We can tell Isolder, so whoever partners with her in the future will be aware of the possible danger and be careful. That way, she'll be safe but she won't worry about Han more than she has to_," Chewie concluded. Luke nodded, deep in thought. _Han…_

"_It wasn't enough of a struggle for it to have been Han's blood_," Chewie said half-jokingly. Luke could see the sincerity of the statement in his eyes, though. He let the train of thought drop from his mind.

"I don't know how we're going to convince Isolder to let one of us partner Leia for the next few days in a row, but I'd rather one of us did," he said to divert Chewie's train of thought from Han, too. While he waited for Chewie's answer, the thought that nobody even considered the possibility of finding Han tomorrow or the next day.

X X X X X

While Luke and Chewie sat talking in the main hold, Leia was lying on her bunk, fully dressed. She couldn't believe things had gotten to the point where she couldn't even find the strength to undress herself at the end of the day. And not physical strength. Indeed, her body was so restless that it seemed to want nothing more than to get up and run around or something. Her mind, though, and her heart, seemed unable to do anything but silently cry out Han's name and wait for sleep. If she could just sleep quietly, without dreams…for a really long time…until someone found Han and brought him back to her. In fact she didn't really want to wake up unless it was to the quiet sound of Han's breathing next to her, or to the sensation of warmth, his back against hers.

No, the still-awake part of her mind protested, no one was going to find Han for her. She had always taken as much responsibility onto her self as possible, to save others the trouble, and to make sure no one but her was left with responsibility and the possibility of failure. Others had gotten so used to it that she was considered by some to be unstoppable, invincible, with never-ending reserves of strength. And she had gotten so used to it that she almost never considered the possibility that she might need help, might not be able to be everything for everybody without even the slightest bit of help from anybody.

Well, now I need it, she thought. And it was true. She couldn't e unendingly selfless. She couldn't give everything up and still be of use to herself, let alone the rest of the galaxy. And now, it was possible that she had lost the bit of selfishness she had allowed herself, only to discover that that one bit was the one she absolutely couldn't do without.

She fell asleep with that thought settling as a dull ache in her heart. That thought and the ever present, never-ending refrain of _my fault, my fault, my fault_…

X X X X X

Leia awoke the next morning to the sensation of cold, damp pressing against her cheek. Her pillow was wet with tears, her face lined with fatigue and her whole body heavy with despair. She opened her eyes, which were sore from the crying she must have done in the night, during her dreams, when such weakness could be permitted, as she wasn't awake to prevent it.

_I can't go on like this_; the thought appeared in her head as swiftly as if she had summoned it there. She hadn't, though, and so she took a moment to roll it over in her mind like a taste on one's tongue. It was a bitter taste. _This has to stop. I can't imagine myself to sleep every night and wake up crying. It's ridiculous_. She wasn't aware of the thought process that carried her to the inevitable conclusion. She didn't pay attention as complicated thoughts flitted through her head without her notice. She turned her conscious mind back to what its subconscious counterpart had been doing to see the result, though. The entire conflict resolved itself on one word, cried out in anguish. _Han!_

She sat up and swung her legs over the side of what the builders of this ship seemed to imagine was a proper bunk. It wasn't, but that was down in the bottom ten of things she cared about at the moment. Within ten minutes' time, she was dressed, with the stormtrooper's belt that had so shocked her Prince strapped around her waist. She noted with cold distance that the blasters were full and the pouch in the back held enough ration cubes to last her as long as three days if she was careful with them. Taking four canteens from the storage closet, she filled them with water and hoped they wouldn't be too heavy for her to carry and cause more thirstiness than they could alleviate.

She seemed to awaken as she looked around the room, fully dressed and half wondering how she had gotten there. _I have to find Han_, she told herself. _I can't keep coming back to the ship and going back to sleep and eating and resting while Han could be dying out there. I need to find him and kiss him and hold him and tell him I'm sorry…so, so sorry_. She had given herself to other people for as long as she could remember. But she couldn't go on doing so forever. Eventually, she would just break down and all she would be good for was a series of red eyes and pillows soaked with her sadness. And so she hoisted the canteens onto her shoulder and left the small cabin silently.

She tiptoed past the cockpit and felt a flash of remorse sting her. Her brother, no doubt exhausted by her mad determination of the day before (the past week, even), had valiantly strapped himself into the pilot's chair straight up and downed the two cups of kaff that now rested on the console so that he could stay awake through her shift as well as his own. It had all been in vain, though, since he was now snoring peacefully, slumped against the crash webbing with his head pillowed on his own shoulder. He would have an awful crick in his neck when he awoke, Leia noted ruefully and thought a moment about making some sort of loud noise as she left so that he would wake up and it wouldn't be quite as bad. But then he would have that much more of a head start on catching up with her and convincing her with his reasonableness that she was being rash. He would bring her back to the ship, and another day would go by without anyone finding Han. So she left him, the flash of remorse coming again as she envisioned how worried he would be for her.

The hatch slid open silently and Leia reflected, as she stepped out into the thick jungle air of this stupid planet, that the hatch's silence was quite possibly the only good feature about this ship, aside from the fact that it did, surprisingly enough, actually run.

X X X X X

"Oh, blast," Luke swore when he awoke and focused his eyes on the chrono that dangled precariously from the cockpit's left bulkhead. "_Blast_." To his acute embarrassment, his face flushed as he absorbed the fact that it was a full hour and a half after his shift in the cockpit had ended…and the last time he remembered being conscious was fifteen minutes after its beginning. He ran a quick visual check over all the systems whose indicators were displayed on the control panel; he still wasn't really awake enough to do more than check for menacingly flashing red lights. Thank the gods. At first glance, everything seemed to have been running smoothly during his impromptu nap. Best of all, the ship's surveillance system didn't seem to have picked up anything unusual, either, so despite the fact that the surveillance system was one of the most paltry he'd ever seen (which was saying something, considering the number of afternoons he had spent at Anchorhead bent over crummy old systems with his friends) that, hopefully, meant that everything was fine. He breathed a sigh of relief as he stood up and stretched.

By the time he was walking down the short corridor to the lone bunkroom, where Leia slept, he had convinced himself that everything was fine. Nothing alarming had happened during his shift, and on top of that, he had (sort of) covered half of Leia's watch for her. And she needed the sleep, so it was all for the better. He passed the main lounge, where Chewie was sprawled on the couch, snoring softly. On the other side of the corridor, a little further down, was the 'fresher, whose hatch yawned open; nobody had been able to fix the closing mechanism so that it actually closed. Luke reflected that it seemed like such a long time ago that he would have been amazed at this ship, when now he felt nothing but disdain for its cramped quarters and dilapidated systems. Well, he had Leia to thank for that, at least in part. At the thought of Leia sleeping peacefully (more or less) in her bunk for a few extra minutes, a small grin crept hesitantly onto his face as he palmed the bunkroom's hatch open.

"Rise and shine, little sister," he called cheerfully into the darkened bunkroom, letting his eyes adjust to the dim lighting. _That's funny_, he thought, _from this angle it almost looks like her bunk is empty_. He stepped a little further into the room, trying not to step on any of the clothes strewn around the floor.

"Leia?" he called hesitantly. He squinted at the bed, and then swept his gaze around the rest of the room. Nothing…

His next words were his most heartfelt of the trip so far.

"Oh, _blast!_"


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's Note: **And, finally, here's another chapter. God only knows when the next one will be out…hopefully soon- if it makes anyone feel any better (if anyone is still reading this to begin with) it's already half written. Also, as usual, thank you so, so much for the encouragement; it helps immensely and just plain brightens my days!

_lateBloomer04:_ I'm really glad you liked the Leia-sneaking-off-the-ship thing- I was a little worried about it at first. And my apologies for not updating sooner, really- I know it's unforgivable, but I really just can't help it. Silly premed-ness.

_The Real Leia_: You're right, I really should write the chapters more than one at a time…but every time I finish one and am satisfied (which takes me forever, as you can probably tell) I'm always eager to post it right away because I know I've left everyone hanging for so long. Chapter 14 is definitely at least halfway done, so hopefully it'll be up soon. Dare I say by the end of the week? Probably I shouldn't say it, but we'll see. ;)

_GreatOne_: giggles So true.

_CrAzYhOrSeGiRl88_: Aw, I'm so flattered that you like this one better than the original. Not that I thought the original was particularly brilliant, as I'm sure you've gathered, but still…he was a professional writer and everything, and I'm just a silly little amateur. Anyway, I'm extremely happy that you like everyone's attitudes- I've been doing my best to get the characterizations as accurately as I can, but I definitely still need practice.

_KnightedRogue_: Yay for honest criticism! Don't ever hesitate to spill out whatever you think is wrong with my story, really- I'm not claiming to know what I'm doing after all. I'm thrilled to pieces that people actually want to read this stuff but more than anything I'm using this as a learning experience. Anyway, you're absolutely right about Leia- I tried to take that into consideration a little more while writing this chapter. I think the trouble is that I had kind of got her to where I wanted her to be in terms of emotions earlier than I thought I would…and then I kind of had to let the plot catch up to her. Oops.

_Cookiemunster_: Yes, definitely "plant". My bad. I shall go fix that right away. Thanks for catching that for me!

_AnnaBelle JJ_: Aw, thank you, I'm glad you think so! And I'm sure your stories are great- I'll come read some as soon as I've got a second and I'll be sure to review them and let you know what I think. :)

_Aramor Lady of Mirkwood:_ Thanks! And I'm definitely a sucker for it, too…which you've probably noticed. ;)

_Pixiepaige:_ Thank you! And I definitely do plan to continue. It may take forever and it may be the slowest story you've ever seen, but I would never abandon a story, even if it seems like it!

**Chapter 13**:

Han awoke from another night spent under the cover of some stupid tree in this stupid jungle in an extremely bad mood. He was skirting the edges of the jungle, having decided he had definitely landed his ship in a desert-like area. This meant that penetrating more deeply into the jungle wasn't necessary, but he had decided to continue his journey just inside of it anyway, so that he could sleep in its shelter and avoid being seen. He'd lost count of how many days he'd been traveling, and he'd lost count of how many days ago he'd lost count, too. His rations were running low, his emergency glow-stick had run out of energy a few days back (he had, naturally, lost count of how many), and the only reason his water supply wasn't running low was because he'd been lucky enough to find streams and other sources of water every day of his journey.

Even that piece of luck wasn't enough to lift him from his black state of mind as he sat up and winced at the soreness that permeated his body. His legs were sore from so much walking, his back was sore from sleeping on the hard, uneven ground, his ribs were sore from being poked all night by sticks he was too tired to remove once he'd lain down, and his head was sore from the constant dampness and the background noise of jungle life that never seemed to sleep.

On this particular morning, though, there was something slightly different about the background noise. And, as annoying as this particular routine had been for the past however many days, things that broke routine in situations like this were generally bad. Unless they happened to be rescuers…something he didn't feel was particularly likely at this point in time. He cocked his head to listen more closely to whatever it was that had alerted him, forgoing his usual morning eye rubbing and muscle stretching.

After discarding several other possibilities, he concluded that something was coming his way. Something that walked around on two feet and was rather large. For one wild moment, he pictured Leia trekking heroically through the jungle to find him. Then he realized that for that to be Leia, she would have had to have gained rather more weight than he thought possible in the course of the past few weeks. (At least, he thought it was weeks. He had, after all, rather lost count.)

_And probably grown a dozen feet or so_, was his first, not especially coherent thought as one of the largest things he'd ever seen thudded into his clearing, wiping out an entire colony of small trees near the clearing's edge.

_Shit_, was his second thought. His third was not a fully formed thought, but more of an impulse, one that made him grab his vest, to which everything important was attached (he hoped), scramble to his feet, and run as fast as he could towards the other edge of the clearing. He wondered fleetingly who would have the advantage: him because he was small enough to run through the jungle growth relatively unscathed, or the creature because it was large enough to simply overcome the jungle growth around it…leaving said growth very scathed indeed.

He had run for what felt like most of the morning, and was actually only just under a standard hour, when he noted that he could no longer hear whatever the thing was behind him. In fact, the jungle's background noise had subsided back to its routine, mind-fraying decibel level. He decided that that made it an opportune moment to sit down for a moment, rest, and enjoy (sort of) a ration bar. It was then that he realized two things. Firstly, he was missing his glow stick. It wasn't as if that was too much of a problem, since it had, after all, ceased to function. But it had been comforting to have it around just the same. The second thing he realized was that he had seen things like the one that had chased him this morning before. When his eyesight had come back, with much coaxing through creams and ointments (which had stung, no matter what Leia had said), after his bout of hibernation sickness, one of the first things he had wanted to see was a holo of the thing that Luke had fought in Jabba's palace. Lando hadn't been able to stop himself from recounting the story over and over during their trip back to the Alliance fleet, and Han had become quite curious about what the thing actually looked like. So when his eyesight had finally returned completely, a few days before they had reached the fleet, Lando had shown him the holo, telling Han that it was the best he could do on short notice- he wasn't sure how to procure a real one, since he didn't know where they came from, these rancors.

X X X X X

"Chewie," Luke shouted as he ran down the corridor. Chewie answered with a muffled rumbling sound, opening his eyes slowly and fixing Luke, who had stopped to stand in the hatchway, with a one-eyed stare.

"It's Leia," he offered breathlessly, by way of explanation, "she's gone."

"_Gone?_" Chewie echoed groggily.

"Yes, gone," Luke reddened slightly, "I fell asleep during my watch and she must've snuck out to go look for Han by herself while I was…not paying attention." If Chewie could have rolled his eyes, Luke was sure he would've.

"_Go let Isolder know. I'll go have a walk around the ship to see if she left any tracks, and we'll decide what to do from there_," Chewie said. Luke nodded and rushed off to the cockpit to comply.

"Isolder? Luke here. We've got a bit of a problem. It seems Leia…um…left, by herself, during the night. To find Han," he spoke into the crackling comm, barely having waited for an answer.

"I'll be there in a minute," Isolder answered. A beep signaled the end of the transmission and Luke sat back in the co-pilot's chair, reaching out with the Force to see if he could detect Leia among the sea of life on this planet. Usually it wasn't too hard to pick out his sister from other living beings in a location, even when she was trying to conceal herself (and he very strongly suspected she was doing so at present), but this jungle was so distractingly full of so many different kinds of life forms that he couldn't find her. He turned his mind instead to the other life forms and hoped Leia wouldn't run across any that meant her harm.

The main hatch slid open a few seconds later to reveal Isolder, looking slightly less meticulously groomed (and rather more flustered) than usual.

"Here," he said without preamble, thrusting a sheet of flimsiplast still warm from the printer into Luke's hand. "I ran the life-sensor through a check to see if it could detect any lone humanoids in the area. There're a few floating around and they're not distinguishable, one from the other, in terms of species. I printed out a map of where they were," he finished, indicating the flimsiplast Luke was holding with a sideways flick of his head.

Luke looked down at it. Two of the dots were within a few miles of each other, in a southerly direction. The other was in a direction slightly north of straight east. He was distracted by Chewie entering the room before he could decide exactly what the map meant they should do.

"_There are some very faint, well-hidden tracks going sort of to the north_," he said.

"She took the time to hide her tracks?" Luke said incredulously.

"Not necessarily," Isolder put in, "there are also two people to the south- maybe she's not to the north or northeast at all. Maybe those aren't her tracks."

"_In which case she hid them really well, since there aren't any tracks to the south except ours_," Chewie retorted in annoyance. _Stupid cub insisted on coming along and now he's going to make us lose Han's princess_, he thought angrily. Luke caught a mental whiff of his old friend's mounting annoyance through the Force and decided that the situation needed to be calmed down as soon as possible.

"We can search in both directions," he said in what he hoped was a soothing tone, "we don't want to put all our Corusca's in one shipment, after all."

The cautionary expression usually used to explain the benefits of back-up plans to children in terms of Corusca gems had the desired effect, and both the wookie and the Hapan relaxed visibly, each taking a small step back from where they had been all but angrily yelling in each other's faces a moment before.

"I think, under the circumstances, we could justify going out and searching alone," Luke continued, "but I think one person should stay behind at the ship, in case Leia comes back. That way, the two people who go out searching can report in every so often, too." Isolder and Chewie nodded reasonably.

"I'm going to try finding those two people," Isolder said, pointing at the sheet of flimsiplast the map was printed on.

"And I'm going to search to the north- where the tracks are," Chewie put in with, Luke later thought, admirable restraint. For his part, Luke was on the verge of protesting that they had no right to simply decide without him that he was going to be the one stuck behind at the ship when he remembered that they sort of did…it was mostly his fault that Leia had been able to run off without alerting anyone to her departure.

X X X X X

Already several miles away, Leia marched energetically through the jungle. It seemed to be thinning, she noticed, which was a definite improvement from the thick, entangling growth she'd been dealing with all morning. She took a deep breath and almost smiled. Despite the fact that this planet was hiding Han from her somewhere, there was something calming about it…even when one was trudging through the depths of its jungles. A glance at her chrono confirmed her suspicion that it was about time to break out the rations again. She chose a log that looked at least moderately dry and sat down, taking a moment to breathe deeply and admire the luscious display of life around her before unzipping her pouch and extracting an energy bar.

She was thinking something along the lines of _whoever said that hunger is the best seasoning was definitely right_ to herself when something shiny caught her eye mid-chew. _Odd_, she thought, _I wonder who uses durasteel around here_. She would've dismissed it as her imagination (after all, who or what could possibly have any use for durasteel around here?) but it really _did_ look like something metallic.

For some reason, her heartbeat quickened as she stood, walked over, and bent over whatever it was. It was definitely durasteel, which meant it had definitely belonged to someone sentient at one point, since Leia knew for a fact that durasteel was sentient-made. She battled with herself for a moment over whether or not picking up the unknown object was really as foolish as her first instinct told her before the logical part of her mind overrode the impulsive part with a well reasoned _but you don't want Han to come across bits of you if this is a thermal detonator_ (not that she gave herself particularly good odds if it was and she _didn't_ touch it), _or, worse, die because you weren't there to rescue him_.

Sighing, she took out the scanner she'd impulsively grabbed from Isolder's personal store of technological gadgets. Whether he was consciously trying to insert himself into her daily life by leaving his possessions in the lounge of their ship or whether he was simply becoming increasingly comfortable with everyone, Isolder had been leaving more and more belongings all over their borrowed ship, so Leia quickly overridden her guilt that morning and taken his top-of-the-line scanner from his jacket pocket and attached it to her belt. Now, she flipped it on and raised her eyebrows appreciatively when it turned on in less than the ten or twenty seconds she had come to expect from any piece of technology more complex than the average chrono. _If only Isolder could just finance the New Republic, we'd have so much…stuff_. She quickly stomped out the small but insistent voice in the back of her head that tried to remind her that they could indeed get Isolder to finance almost anything the New Republic needed, with just a little compromising on her part. But it wasn't a "little" compromise, as so many of the council members had tried to convince her. It was the rest of her life, and, no matter how much she loved her job and the New Republic, she couldn't give it up.

Which was why, when, six and a half seconds later, the scanner pronounced the object un-reactive, not poisoned, and not likely to explode in her face and she scooped it up from the ground and recognized it, her breath caught in her throat and her eyes brimmed with half grateful and half fearful tears. A standard issue Rebel Alliance glowstick, re-made to include wires for two extra power packs and one extra fluoro-rod could only belong to one person on this gods-forsaken planet. And that one person was the one she wanted, more than anything in the universe, to find.

_Han's alive Han's alive Han's alive Han's alive_, was the refrain that ran over and over through Leia's mind, blocking out any other rational thoughts she might have had. Feverishly she turned the glowstick over in her hands several times, remembering what Han had shown her one lazy afternoon back on…where had that been, anyway? Endor, she remembered, after a few moments of dedicating a small portion of her mind to recovering the memory. After all, where else had she permitted herself to spend afternoons in nothing more productive than spending time with Han? It had been one of those afternoons, one of the ones soon after she had learned of her parentage, when she had been doubting her life and her very sense of self and Han had taken her out into the forest to show her that she needn't embrace this mystical new power Luke had made known to her if she didn't want her.

"When you're in a forest, like this, it's real easy to track sentients, especially clumsy ones," he'd told her, slipping his arms around her waist and kissing the back of her neck. Pointing to the ground, he'd shown her where one of their own soldiers had apparently dropped his ration pack. "See how it's covered with dirt and stuff? That means other things have traveled through here since they dropped it; that's how the dirt got there. And if it's covered with unbroken leaves, you can tell it's been there long enough for them to fall on it. If it's covered with broken leaves, that means that something probably stepped on the leaves after they fell, too." They'd knelt down to examine the leaves together, and, after Leia had successfully estimated that the ration pack in question had probably been dropped before the battle had taken place a few days before. When Leia had shown signs of getting upset with the soldiers under their command for being so careless, Han had lain her down on the ground, where they had broken more than a few leaves while Han melted and molded her until her body felt so soft that she had thought that anyone could have stepped on it without leaving the faintest imprint.

Now she could feel a flush creeping up her neck to redden her face as the memory of that afternoon washed over her. There was no dirt on the glowstick she'd found. It had not been covered with leaves, crushed, bent or otherwise. Han had passed through here recently, perhaps within the past few hours. _Han's alive_, the happy thought came again, _and I love him_.

She savored the thought as she held the glowstick to her chest as if it were a valuable treasure. She was close- it would lead her to the most valuable treasure of all. She would find Han, have him in her arms, maybe even before nightfall. A smile played across her lips and she closed her eyes to savor the moment.

"Up hands!" came an unfamiliar but unmistakably hostile voice, ripping through the peaceful fabric of the air to disturb Leia's first truly happy moment in weeks.


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: **As usual, there are obviously unforgivable lapses in updating to apologize for here, and I do: I apologize most sincerely. For anyone who may still be bravely attempting to read this, though, here is the fourteenth chapter. Actually (and do your best not to die of shock) there's a fifteenth chapter that I'm posting as well, probably without any notes.

Obviously my behavior as a fanfic writer doesn't merit the reward of comments/reviews, but if you should happen to see something wrong you'd like to see fixed, do let me know, because I'm definitely always interested in what advice people have for improvement.

One other thing: I used to respond to people's comments individually right here in the author's notes, but I've decided to discontinue that in case it annoys other readers (that's assuming I have any of those left). Since the majority of reviewers seem to have accounts with this site, I'll just respond by PM-ing you back.

Thanks for all your lovely thoughts, to everyone who reviewed the last chapter and I hope you enjoy these two!

**Chapter 14:**

Leia opened her eyes almost before the voice was done making its statement, her combat instincts, somewhat put to rest for the past few years, coming back to her instantly. She blinked back with practiced ease the tears that had flooded her eyes with happiness just a moment before and looked around the clearing, raising her hands slowly. _Easier to get out of tight spots if you cooperate at first,_ Han had told her once, one morning in bed when he had been cockily recounting his heroics during an episode of escaping bounty hunters on some faraway planet.

She squinted against the sunlight that was somehow managed to fight its way through the thick jungle canopy to cast her captors in a blinding patch of brightness. Either they had gotten lucky, or they knew the jungle extremely well and had planned it that way. She decided to opt for the latter suspicion; with as little sunlight as there was in this jungle, the odds of ending up in the one ray of it harbored couldn't be that great.

Her reflections were cut short when the person in question came out of the obscuring ray of sunlight and whipped a thick cord of considerable length out from…somewhere. It didn't seem to Leia that the woman's outfit – and she was immediately recognizable as a woman – left much room for stowing thick lengths of rope. In fact, it didn't seem as though the woman should be able to move in it at all, but it must have been more supple than it looked, because before Leia could even finish evaluating the situation to determine that the rope seemed to be the woman's only weapon and that drawing her blaster would therefore probably be a good course of action, her wrists were bound tightly together by the rope.

She mentally cited some of the more colorful expressions in her repertoire- also Han's legacy- before invoking her foster father's teachings instead.

"Excuse me, but there seems to be some sort of misunderstanding here," she said with as much dignity as she could manage while her wrists were rather embarrassingly bound in front of her. She spoke less firmly than she would have liked, but that was because she was casting her eye around the jungle floor in search of Han's glowstick. She felt somehow further away from Han without that tangible link to him safely in her hand. Now was not the time to worry about her own misgivings about losing the glowstick, though, given that the woman across the clearing from her did not seem to have understood her. _Stop being ridiculous, Leia_, she scolded herself mentally. _You were quick enough to be cold-hearted and emotionless, even at Han's expense, when you thought the New Republic could benefit from it. It won't do either of you any good if you get captured or killed by some strange woman now_.

"You will kindly remove your bindings from me this instant," she told the woman in her most commanding tones (and the clearest Basic she could manage), "I have done nothing to you to deserve this treatment and you have no right to injure my person in this manner." Having been the subject of the last diplomatic meeting she'd attended, the text of one of the latest versions of the sentients' rights laws currently being drafted by the Inner Council came back to her as she drew up to her full height (not that it was much, Han was constantly telling her) to make her declaration, rendering her words more formal than she had meant. She knew that Han, for instance, would have been decidedly more casual about it. Suppressing both the completely inappropriate grin and the rather inconvenient tears that threatened to overtake her face, she struggled to continue to look imperiously at the woman she had just addressed as if they were in a Court of Justice. It didn't seem to have mattered, she discovered a moment later, because the woman peered at her curiously for a moment before shrugging.

"No hear," she told Leia in clipped tones. Leia squinted at the woman as she approached, finally leaving that kriffing patch of sunlight. She appeared young- younger than Leia would have guessed from her low, husky voice, but her age didn't seem to have inspired any lack of self-confidence. And on top of it she was apparently deaf. _Great. Just what I needed_, Leia thought in annoyance. It wasn't even as if Leia was completely lacking in any other mode of communication, once Basic and the other vocal languages she knew had been exhausted. She was also familiar with at least four genres of sign-language. None of which helped, since her hands were tied tightly in front of her.

It wasn't going to matter anyway, she discovered a moment later. While Leia had been reflecting on her lack of lingual resources, the woman had been tying another length of her rope to the part she had already wound around Leia's wrists, and was now, apparently, preparing to lead Leia someplace. She turned away from Leia, apparently having decided she wasn't even a threat worthy of keeping her eye on.

"Come," she said commandingly. Leia wasn't sure what to devote her mind to: being insulted at having been dismissed as harmless, the fact that the woman apparently could speak (and in Basic!) despite her lack of hearing, or the fact that the woman had been able to walk up to Leia and attach her to another rope all while Leia was pondering one simple thought. _What's wrong with me?_ The thought crossed her mind sluggishly as she squirmed her forearms within their bindings, which were beginning to chafe her wrists more than she could easily ignore.

Her head was beginning to feel curiously fuzzy, too, as small, black, pinpoint-sized spots began to dance across her field of vision. She swayed slightly, attempting to gather enough presence of mind to mentally scold her legs for being so blasted unsteady while simultaneously trying to recall the techniques against dizziness she had been taught as part of her military training during her youth on Alderaan. It was really quite pathetic, she would have decided had she been able to form the thought; her body's weaknesses had never betrayed her so readily before, at least, not that she could remember. Not that she could remember much of anything right now anyway. She was dimly aware of the fact that they had stopped moving. She lifted her eyes to look the young woman in the face, an act that seemed to take all of her remaining energy, and was surprised to see a smirk on the woman's face. _I guess I can't read faces as well I used to, because she's being so nice to let me stop and rest a bit_, was her last fully formed thought before any other thoughts she might have been about to have fled completely and the black spots filled her field of vision completely.

Isolder tromped on through the jungle for the second day in a row, beginning to regret that he had insisted upon taking his turn at guard duty last. Of course, he couldn't have done otherwise; he had to show concern of the highest degree for his betrothed (or… well, practically betrothed, anyway), and of course he really was concerned about her and didn't want to spend his day sitting in the ship and worrying about her and waiting for something to happen – something that he probably wouldn't know what to do about anyway. But, still…at home (and in most other places, come to think of it), there were other people to do tedious things, not to mention potentially dangerous things, like search through jungles for wayward females. Even if they were one's betrothed. That was just the way it was done on Hapes.

But that was all right. He could play the courageous and gallant lover. No one would ever know that he wasn't really Leia's lover – they were on first name terms (more or less) and that was all anyone really needed to know. Yes, that sounded about right: _Princess' valiant and boyishly handsome suitor marches bravely through jungle to save her imperiled life_. It made a perfectly grand headline, one that even his mother could be proud of. In fact, he half wished one of her hired holonews reporters was here with their recording equipment to witness his strength and bravery in the face of…mortal peril and all that. It would have saved him an afternoon or two of being followed around so that a proper sort of statement could be made when the time came and his mother decided he needed to 'go a little more public'.

Gods, he hated it when she said stupid things like that. Honestly. What did the woman think? That he was some five-year-old to be bribed into doing her bidding with a few shiny toys? Though, come to think of it, he usually did find it considerably easier to cooperate after she had promised to set her teams of scientists to designing whatever his latest desire was. Not as though the rest of the Hapes Consortium didn't appreciate his flights of fancy, though. The rest of the galaxy, too, for that matter. Leia, for one, he predicted, would be quite pleased when his scanner ended up leading him to her, to rescue her from whatever ills had befallen her.

Pleased himself with the image that thought conjured in his mind, he allowed his imagination to elaborate on it to pass the time, putting in such details as small tears in Leia's dress (though she'd actually been wearing more of a utility suit) in key places, having her swoon against a conveniently shaped tree (the trees here were all sort of gnarly and uncomfortable-looking, but no matter), and himself charging heroically and handsomely through the underbrush to appear in the clearing where she was lying (or propped against the aforementioned tree) unconscious, the sun glinting off the massive weapon he was carrying as well as his hair (never mind that both his weapon, which was decidedly on the smaller side, and his hair were looking a bit smudged and worse for the wear… not to mention his clothes, which were sporting some of the tears he'd imagined onto Leia's attire).

Occupied with such pleasurable imaginings (in fact, he was so much so that a lips began to curve their way into a smile), it took him far longer than it should have to notice the heat that was suddenly beating down upon his back. When he finally did notice, he looked up, his smile widening for a split-second as he realized that the trees had thinned completely: maybe it was the clearing from his daydream! He was not only brilliant and handsome, but also clairvoyant! Splendid!

It was such a disappointment to find that it was not a clearing at all, but instead the end of the whole forest (and even more so that he was not clairvoyant), that his smile fell completely from his mouth, leaving it midway between a frown and a pout. However, true to his noble character, he recovered quickly, marshaled his thoughts and emotions, and came to the conclusion that he had, as suspected, come to the edge of the forest. A second conclusion, that at the edge of the forest seemed to be located a wide grassland-like terrain, came hot on the heels of the first. He was about to begin pondering the question of why the forest, which seemed full to bursting with, well, nature, didn't expand into some of the grasslands, which were obviously comparatively much weaker, when his attention was arrested by something else. Something very large and even a little bit shiny.

He spent a moment adjusting his eyes to the sunlight that assaulted them as he looked up to find the top of it, and then a sense of familiarity began to dawn on him. It was a ship. And not just any ship: it was a ship of which he'd grown up watching vids and occasional newsflashes on the Holonet. Well, 'grown up' might be pushing it. He had, in fact, been nineteen when it had made the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs, and twenty-one when it had helped to blow up the first Death Star. But, still. It took him a full five minutes to recover himself and his thoughts. (Partly because it was rather difficult to reconcile his awe in the face of this ship with the fact that he was currently attempting – and, he flattered himself, at least partially succeeding – in seducing its owner's girlfriend of four years.)

Unfortunately, whatever mental tribulations he was undergoing did not deter the slight young woman who was currently circling the awestruck outsider, brandishing a rope. In fact, she was standing directly behind him by the time he finally took note of the mysterious swishing sound of something moving towards him through the knee-high grass. He turned around abruptly, ready to somehow tackle whatever it was, wrap his hands around its neck (he was picturing something along the lines of a medium-sized serpent) and – but it wasn't a serpent at all. And by the time he realized this and had altered his plan of attack accordingly, she had lassoed him with her rope (which he abstractedly noted to be approximately the thickness of the hypothetical serpent he had been expecting) and was pulling him towards her for closer inspection. Though he had an innate aversion to women attired in jumpsuits made of things that looked distinctly reptilian in origin, particularly after his recently imagined fight with a snake, he found himself forced to walk awkwardly towards her to avoid being pulled completely over by the rope that bound his arms to his sides.

"Teneniel Djo," she said sharply, looking him carefully up and down. He was somewhat younger than her last catch. Not necessarily better looking, but definitely younger and she did, after all, enjoy fresh meat far more than older, more grizzled types. Of course, this one didn't look to have nearly a fraction of the other one's intelligence (his surprise at her speech coupled with his annoyance at the fact that she had the nerve not to address him in Basic had produced a rather less than bright expression on his face), but his body more than made up for it. Not that the other hadn't had a good body, too, but… this one was just younger and somehow… juicier. It would be fun to toy with him before sending him off to the fields.

She stepped slightly closer and Isolder found himself blushing rather embarrassingly as she reached around him to tie the rope more securely around his waist. It might have been a perfect opportunity to attempt escape, but as it was he had to take a deep breath to regain some semblance of control (as much as he could, given that the rope still held him tightly bound) as she turned around and made visible a very shapely anatomy, of which her jumpsuit left very little to the imagination. He stared dumbfounded at her hips, which were swaying smoothly from side to side as she began to walk slowly away from him, until the rope reached the end of its slack and he was almost jerked off his feet before his stumbled forwards automatically, almost disappointed that he hadn't fallen onto her and toppled them both into the grass.

The other end of the rope was tied around her small (but, he was sure, strong) waist and she led him around in a small circle until they were facing the forest from under the shade of the _Millennium Falcon_. Isolder was just regaining his balance when another girl in lizard clothes sprang out into the grass from the cover of the forest. Teneniel Djo's head whipped around from where she had been studying Isolder and spotted the other woman immediately. Before Isolder really understood what was going on, they were both running towards the other woman. Or rather, Teneniel Djo was running – what Isolder was doing could better be described as stumbling behind her, mostly propelled by the rope around his waist. The other woman ran towards them as well and they all reached each other within a matter of seconds, and the two women immediately began jabbering in their strange language.

That was when time seemed to go a little funny for Isolder. He felt as though it was simultaneously slowing down and speeding up: the women seemed to talk faster and faster until their words were blurred beyond hope of understanding, but at the same time, he felt as though no time at all went by, as if they were suspended in one, long, voice-filled moment that would never end. The heat of the planet seemed to make it shimmer; in fact, the whole landscape seemed to ripple in waves before his eyes, including his captor and her friend. He couldn't be sure, but he thought the woman was un-hooking her rope from his. Yes, definitely: he felt even more unsteady now, without the tautness of the rope to hold him up, and the forest in front of him gave another colossal heave as he looked curiously around, trying to figure out what was happening.

The last thing he remembered before falling into the grass was one of the women saying 'Luke Skywalker' amid the rest of whatever else they were saying, but he could easily have been mistaken. All the same, he would be more careful of who her friends and family associated with, the next time he went out in search of a wife.

Teneniel Djo turned around as Isolder thudded to the ground and then glanced back at her cousin, Alarna Dje.

"_73 seconds_," said Tialarna Dje.

"_Hah. My last one lasted 94_," Teneniel Djo gloated, "_and even longer after catching his whuffa_."

"_Not really much of a victory, Teneniel, since this one's yours, too. What are you going to do with him?_"

Both women turned back to look at him. He was sprawled in the grass, his arm twisted at an angle underneath him.

"_That arm'll be sore for a few days. He won't be good for much_," her cousin observed, "_might as well let him go, really_."

Teneniel Djo went over to him and heaved him up by one shoulder to extract the arm in question from underneath his back. She lay him back down and felt along the arm for broken bones and any other abnormalities, but all she noted was that his arm was muscular in a very pleasant, masculine way: large, bulging muscles of the sort that the men on Dathomir often acquired by long hours of hauling whuffa out of the ground. Perhaps he came from a place where men were responsible for hunting whuffa as well. She made a show of extending his arm out towards her and moving it about, ostensibly stretching it, and then bent to examine his hand. It was strong and well built as well, but contrary to the rough, calloused palms and fingers developed by the men she and her clan kept, it was soft and smooth, like that of a queen whose sisters did all the work. As she stood, she thought to herself that she wouldn't mind checking the rest of him for injuries and, even more, holding that soft hand to her cheek, just for a moment. The thought made her redden uncharacteristically, and she covered it by pretending she was being affected by the heat. Her cousin, a few years older, raised an eyebrow and came over to peer at her clan-sister's catch.

"_Not bad looking, though, for a man_," she said, watching Teneniel Djo for a reaction.

"_No_," Teneniel Djo breathed in agreement. She was beginning to think, in fact, that she had never seen a more attractive or desirable man in all her life, "_imagine the daughters one could get with him!_"

Tialarna Dje shook her head discreetly while her cousin continued to stare at the outlander. It was always dangerous to fall in love with one's catch, or even to desire him for anything more than the production of daughters. But most young girls experienced it once, or – if they were particularly dense – twice, and then were wise enough not to let it happen again and, indeed, to counsel others against it. Tialarna Dje was put in mind of a certain red-haired young man who had crashed on their planet five or six years ago. He had fathered her twin daughters – a particularly special prize – but he had died of whuffa poisoning before they were born and that had been the end of that. Outlanders were rather too weak to live for long periods of time on Dathomir; like pet roshawks, they weren't meant to be kept so it was better not to get attached. Teneniel Djo was young, though, and had always been sharp-witted and sensible in the past. And she was old enough to think about daughters, now. Perhaps it was about time she had a dalliance with an off-worlder.

"_You'd be the talk of all the village, but I'm sure if anyone could keep a man safe it would be you. Go ahead and keep him. If nothing else, that arm can be practice at healing for you if it does turn out to be hurt_," Tialarna Dje told her young cousin with a grin.

Happy to have her cousin's blessing, Teneniel Djo mirrored it, one of the few true expressions of pleasure Tialarna Dje had seen on her since her parents had died last year.

"_I think I'll stay here with him a while_," Teneniel Djo announced, looking back at her prize, "_let him sleep it off. They're always in a better mood that way_."

Tialarna Dje nodded knowingly.

"_Indeed._"

When Isolder awoke, the first thing he noted was that he was not alone. That he noticed this first was unusual, because he almost never was alone on Hapes: there were always guards and companions of one kind or another shadowing his every step, to protect him, amuse him, bring him the steady stream of messages that always came from his mother, and other such useful activities. So he generally had ceased to take note of it. Usually, what he would have noticed first were things such as the fact that his back was damp, there were small rocks digging uncomfortably into his ribs, and that his arm was sore. For now, however, he ignored all of these unfortunate circumstances and looked around, craning his neck to see behind him.

His neck was at a particularly uncomfortable angle when he spotted the girl who was sitting serenely behind him. Despite the angle, he couldn't help himself from continuing to stare at her for a full minute or two. He couldn't see much of her face because the sun at her back cast it in shadow, but the same sun reflected off of her blue-black hair. It seemed that she had loosed her hair from its braid and was now re-braiding it, and Isolder was fascinated by the sight. As her fingers worked their way towards the bottom of the braid, his eyes followed their path down her slender neck, across her shapely torso, where they rested for a moment to absorb the reflections from the bright green scales of her bodysuit, and finished at her tightly muscled waist, where she tied off the braid with some sort of twine-looking elastic and then looked back at him. Whether from the discomfort caused to his neck by holding his head at such an angle for so long a time or from the impact of her cat-green eyes meeting his, he gasped.

"Wake?" his companion asked in her usual heavily accented and more-than-slightly awkward interpretation of Basic. He nodded, wincing at the lines of tension that shot through his neck and shoulders at the movement.

"Hurt?" she inquired, leaning down to peer more closely at him.

"Just a little," he said manfully, trying to raise himself to lean on his elbows and failing.

She nodded understandingly.

"Sleep ground, no good," she explained, as if he hadn't gathered that himself by now. Her actions were more interesting to him than his words, because she was maneuvering herself closer to him and then she was lifting his upper body up slightly and then his head was pillowed in her lap and he was looking straight up at her face and other aspects of her anatomy and he was almost positive he had never been more comfortable in his life. It didn't last for long, though, because after a quick smile, she began to work at his shoulders with her hands in what he thought must be her culture's version of a massage, but it little resembled the gentle ones he received almost daily at home. Even that was over far too quickly and she lifted her legs out from under his head and hauled him to a half-upright position against what he presumed was her pack.

"Ship, you?" she asked, pointing to the _Millennium Falcon_, near which they were still sitting. He followed her finger, and then shook his head.

"Not mine, no," he corrected her regretfully, "ship, Han Solo's."

"Han Solo, great good whuffa hunter?" she queried, her eyes widening in disbelief. Isolder frowned. Great good _what_? Well, Han Solo wasn't great or good in any respect, as far as Isolder was concerned, but he had to admit that there were many that would disagree with him, so it wasn't at all improbable that if this woman were acquainted with Han Solo, she would think him both.

"Um, yes, I suppose," Isolder said, again regretfully.

"You, Han-Solo-great-good-whuffa-hunter, friend?" she seemed to be posing another question, but it took him a minute to puzzle it out (he did wish she would stop referring to Han that way… it was getting a bit ridiculous, really).

"Are Solo and I _friends_?" he repeated the question, more to accustom himself to the concept (it wasn't one he had really encountered before) than because he needed a clarification. The girl nodded, and the look of hope in her eyes was so great that Isolder decided to improvise a little. After all, who was to say that he and Han Solo wouldn't someday be friends? There only differences, after all, were that… well, actually, maybe they did have quite a few differences. But the main one, the one that counted, was fairly easily resolvable... or maybe not. In any case, he didn't want to upset the girl, not when they were getting on so well, considering she had had him tied up on the floor just a few hours ago and now she was massaging him instead.

"Yes, Han Solo and I know each other quite well, actually," he said, puffing out his chest a little. After all, he was at least… well, _acquainted_ with Han Solo. "Good friends," he clarified when his statement seemed to be met with more confusion than anything else. At that, the girl smiled and nodded, a lovely sight to see.

"Han Solo come?" she asked eagerly. Isolder frowned. This was getting a little complicated.

"Maybe," he thought it was safe to answer. Then he had a truly inspired idea and began digging in one of the pockets attached to his utility belt to find his signaling device. He held it out to the girl.

"This will make Solo come," he told her. If it did, well, he would deal with that then. If not, surely someone else would come and return him to his friends. After which he would take care never to accompany errant fiancées to backwater planets again. The girl nodded and watched him assemble the signal and then both of them looked up at the flare it sent up into the sky. Then Teneniel Djo opened the conversation again.

"Han Solo go to ship… me go to ship… go to away?" she asked, still eagerly. Isolder frowned.

"Maybe," he answered, hoping he had misunderstood. Why would this woman want to go anywhere with Han Solo? Why would anyone, for that matter? Hadn't Leia just about come to choosing him, Isolder, over that pirate?

It seemed to satisfy her, however, and she settled back into a more relaxed position.

"Now sleep," she announced, moving closer to him. Before he knew what was happening, she was lying down not far from him on the grass, stretched out with her head resting on her arms, and staring up at the sky.

"Good," she commented, pointing to the flare. Isolder nodded, wishing he had the courage to inch slightly closer to her. As it was, he was comforted by the nearness of another human being, however strange. The bright green of the flare matched that of the girl's eyes and Isolder's eyes were drawn back to hers. He found she was looking at him as well, and after a few moments it occurred to him that he should introduce himself. He extended a hand.

"Isolder," he said, pointing at himself with the other hand. She stared uncomprehendingly at his extended hand for a moment before understanding.

"Teneniel Djo," she answered.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15:**

Luke had been trying to meditate when Chewie returned at the appointed hour. They had waited the appointed half hour for Isolder to come back. They had tried to send him a message via the various gadgets they knew he was carrying with him. Failing that, they had sat staring at the floor of the lounge for another fifteen minutes. Isolder had been, at that point, an hour late. Chewie had looked up at Luke then and, as if he had come to life just then, he had announced that he was going out.

"_That prince has probably gotten himself into trouble somewhere and we still haven't found Han or the Princess, so I am going to go out and continue the search tonight. You stay here until morning, and if no one comes back, come out and search as well_."

Luke had nodded wordlessly.

"_We_ _did wrongly in letting Isolder go out alone_," Chewie continued, "_I am Wookie and you are Jedi, but he is naught but a young, inexperienced prince, barely out of his mother's nest-tree_."

Ignoring the fact that he was pretty sure they didn't live in nest-trees on Hapes, Luke had nodded again.

"Good luck, Chewie," he had said, clasping his friend around the shoulders as best he could, given the wookie's height, and sending him on his way, wishing he didn't have to wait the entire night before going out to search.

"May the Force be with you," he'd muttered as his friend walked out of sight. He had then closed up the ship's ramp and sat down in the cockpit to try to meditate himself into calm enough a state of mind to get some rest before starting out in the morning.

Now it was morning, and he was checking the ship just one last time before leaving. A piece of flimsiplast with a note to the rest of them with information as to which direction everyone had gone in (to the best of his knowledge) was stuck near the ramp controls and the ramp itself was as locked as it was going to be. Only Han didn't know the passkey to get in, but, hopefully, if he should happen to pass by, he would have the good sense to stay put until someone else came back. Although, though Luke wryly, the locked ramp wasn't likely to stop Han – he was more likely to hotwire it or otherwise reorganize its circuitry than to wait around outside.

Luke took one last hopeful look around the clearing in which they had landed, but no one had appeared in the last few seconds. Pity. He took off at a fast clip, sending out exploratory tendrils of Force-sense, wishing he had practiced more for this eventuality, trained himself to be able to pick out the Force-signatures of specific beings from the background noise of Coruscant, instead of merely reveling in the overwhelming sense of _life_ that was always present there.

X X X X X

Han was well and truly annoyed now. There was a time for tramping through the forest like some poor lost imbecile, and there was a time for sitting down in the Falcon's lounge with a good tankard of Corellian yellow ale and one of those concoctions of Chewie's, which were usually just barely palatable (the ale helped a lot there). The time for the former had passed, and the time for the latter had come and gone quite a while ago. In the meantime, he was beginning to stumble, which made him look a slight bit tired, and things that made Han Solo look anything less than completely in control were not things he approved of. And in addition to that, his stomach was grumbling, something that he never tolerated if he could help it. Gods, would this forest never end?

And then, just as he was thinking two rather incompatible thoughts at the same time (that if he sat down he was not likely to get back up again and that he would desperately like to sit down right now), it did. It took his eyes a full two minutes to adjust to the brighter light and the lack of green plants obscuring his vision. Instead of the trees and underbrush that had plagued him for the past week or so of walking, grass spread in waves ahead of him, for as far as he could see. It was strange, but after the 150 or so hours that he had spent cursing his surroundings and wishing he could get out of that damned jungle, he suddenly discovered himself reluctant to leave it. Faced with the overwhelming emptiness in front of him, he felt a sense of protection in the forest's shadow. Reassuring himself that he just preferred walking in the shade to walking with the sun beating down on his back, he decided to skirt the jungle for a while.

There was bound to be some sort of civilization at the edge of the forest somewhere, right? Wasn't there always supposed to be something at the edges of forests? Or was that rivers? His head was beginning to feel awfully fuzzy; that was for sure. There was really only a certain amount of time for which a guy could go without food before he collapsed or, worse, thought Han, started doing stupid things. Then again, he was Han Solo, not just some ordinary guy.

And so he plodded on, filling his belly as best he could with water from his canteen, and wishing he had attended some sort of fancy school (or even just a pre-mission briefing) where they taught you things like how to discern which plants were edible, which would kill you, and which would merely make you sick or turn you purple or some such other alarming but not catastrophic thing. At this point, he would gladly have risked turning purple. Death was probably a bit extreme, though.

He was about to risk sitting down on something and even taking a nap in the soothingly bright sun, when he thought he saw something up ahead. In fact he was quite sure of it: it was a flare, one of the old standard-issue Alliance flares. And near it, he perceived as he got closer, was something else. Something that was not just grass, not forest, and hopefully not a rancor, or anything else interested in eating him. No, it was probably one of those mirage things. Except didn't you usually hallucinate lakes and running water and stuff? This looked more like… well, like a ship, to be honest. In fact, the closer he got, the more familiar it looked. Which was strange, because as much as he would have loved to see his ship right now, in all honesty, what he would probably have hallucinated, given a choice, would have been a very greasy Corellian hrub steak with a side of… but it really did look like a ship. In fact, it looked a whole lot like his own ship. The next thing he knew, he was running towards it despite himself, the flare, and his rumbling stomach. The _Falcon_ did have ration bars on her somewhere, outdated though they might be, and, well, it was _his ship_.

Stumbling over the grass, he was so happy to see her that he was mid-whoop of excitement when he tripped over something large in the grass, causing him to execute a rather taxing but relatively graceful flying leap over what appeared to be a humanoid body. He staggered a few steps and rubbed the musculature of his behind a little. _That'll be sore in the morning_, he thought, _not as young as before_. This was a moment where, were she here, Leia would smooth the hair off his forehead affectionately, kiss him soundly, and reassure him that he was still _very_ young and handsome. And supple. He turned back around, a small smile appearing on his face at the thought. And then he caught sight of what he had just jumped over.

It appeared to be a certain frog prince of his recent acquaintance, intertwined with… a large reptile? He leaned down, still rubbing his hindquarters, and took a closer look. Upon second inspection, what he had previously taken for an oversized lizard seemed instead to be a young woman clothed in lizard skin. A remarkably familiar-looking woman. Asleep on a remarkably familiar-looking man. Upon third inspection, in fact, it seemed that it was his former captor resting upon his (possibly former) girlfriend's (possibly former – Han hoped) boyfriend. At this point, he was too tired to try to figure out just where he and Leia and Isolder all stood with one other. In any case, however, the combination of Isolder and Teneniel Djo apparently asleep on each other under the shadow of the Falcon was too much for him, and he could not stop from exclaiming,

"_Fancy-pants?_"

Teneniel Djo responded by rubbing her eyes drowsily and pushing herself to a half-sitting position, using Isolder to prop herself up. She started as she sat up and noticed who she was sleeping on, and began to carefully inch herself away with what Han perceived as an unmistakably guilty expression on her face. Isolder seemed quite soundly unconscious, however, and Han was definitely one hundred percent sure that it was him now, so he took a step closer and indulged an urge he'd been harboring for a few weeks by kicking Isolder soundly in the rear.

"Hey, fancy-pants, wake up!" he leaned down to shout in Isolder's ear. Isolder sat up suddenly enough that Han had to take a step back to avoid having Isolder's forehead connect with his chin.

"H-han Solo?" he murmured groggily, squinting up at Han. Han straightened his back and looked threateningly down at the prince, whose eyes quickly opened themselves as wide as they would go.

"You stole my girlfriend!" Han accused.

"I brought you to your ship!" Isolder retorted indignantly, gesturing at the flare under which he and Teneniel Djo had fallen asleep the night before.

"You need me to get you free," Han countered, winking at Teneniel Djo, who had, after considerable cat-like stretching, coiled herself into a sitting position and was now smiling jovially at Han.

"You know these people?" Isolder questioned incredulously. So the great good hunter thing was possibly true. Han recalled in his mind's eye the way one of Teneniel Djo's hands had been resting on Isolder's chest and the way one of his legs had been curled under both of hers, prior to her surreptitious movements away from him. At least they were both dressed, Han thanked the Gods.

"You seem pretty friendly with them yourself," he commented with a raised eyebrow. Forgetting the issues at hand in face of the incongruity of the situation, Han decided to ask the obvious, still peering disbelievingly at the scene before him.

"Hey, fancy-pants, what're you doing here, anyway? Aren't you supposed to be on Coruscant, you know, seducing my girlfriend and stuff?"

Isolder propped himself up on both elbows.

"Bit of a long story, actually. Starting with you taking off to… well, here, apparently. Leia and that other, ah, _thing_, got your distress signal, so we followed it to you, and we'd been searching for you here for a few days when Leia took off in the middle of the night, so… now we're searching for her as well. Only I've found you. Lucky me, eh?"

"Yeah, you-" Han cut himself off as a particularly worrisome thought occurred to him. "Wait, what do you mean, you're 'searching for her'? She's still out here somewhere, alone?" he took a menacing step forwards with those words.

"Yes, horrible thought, I know. She ran off while we were sleeping, it seems, but we're doing our best…" Isolder let his voice trail off with a frown.

"Doing your best? By cozying up to the natives and forgetting all about Leia, while she-", but he didn't want to think about what might be happening to her while he was wasting his time with her good-for-nothing suitor. "I bet," he sneered instead.

Han's emotions had been fluctuating from touched that Leia had come after him (momentarily flooded with happy warmth, in fact), to annoyed that she had seen fit to let Isolder tag along, to a spike of worry that she might be wandering alone in the jungle. At the sight of Isolder's smile, however, all of the intensity of his emotions was shifted swiftly into fury.

"You bastard!" he growled, "Djo-whatever, get out of the way a minute," he glanced at Teneniel Djo (he had no quarrel with her and, after all, had no idea how dangerous she might turn out to be) before turning back to his rival in one long lunge. His hunger and fatigue completely forgotten, he hauled the prince halfway off his back out of sheer rage and stared at him for a fraction of a second, feeling as though pure hatred were coursing through his veins. It turned out to be more akin to a stream of the foulest language he knew in what was possibly the most eloquent arrangement he had ever used (barring that one fight over a sabacc game with some other treacherous kriffer, the time he'd been drunk enough to bet his own pants… but it was better not to think about that), which he let loose at Isolder in such a furious tone of voice that even Teneniel Djo took a few shocked steps back. He hadn't been planning on actually hitting Isolder, not wanting to annoy Leia any further if and when he finally did see her again and not thinking the man was really worth the sore knuckles he'd earn himself, but, suddenly, thinking of his ridiculous sojourn on this ridiculous planet, all the heartache caused to himself and Leia during the past few weeks, and, worst of all, worse than anything else in the universe, the fact that Leia might now be in danger, he couldn't help himself, and before the decision had fully developed from subconscious urge to conscious decision, he was swinging his fist in a tight arc, disregarding any boxing technique he knew and operating instead on pure instinct. It was a very satisfying moment when he heard something in Isolder's jaw crunch. Not his neck or anything drastic like that, of course – he certainly didn't want to deal with the mess that killing the man would make – but just some simple sort of injury that would cause him to hold his head at a painful and unattractive angle for a few weeks.

"Why, you gods-be-damned _peasant_!" Isolder snarled angrily. He swung a blind undercut at Han's midsection and suddenly Han was gasping for his breath and all he could do was drive the stiff toe of his boot in Isolder's general direction. It connected magnificently with the center of his left shin. Isolder found himself stumbling backwards to the ground, where he had the misfortune of landing partially on a rather sharp rock formation. When Han managed to straighten up, Isolder's eyes were tearing while Teneniel Djo's were rolling in a largely universal gesture. If she had been able to speak Basic a little more fluently, she probably would have been accompanying the gesture with a cynical snort of "men!" As it was, she knelt next to Isolder and systematically began to feel along his jaw for breakages; satisfied that there weren't any, she moved efficiently on to his leg and finally, rolled him over to examine the parts of him that had fallen on the rock. Finding that he was for the most part whole, she lay him gently on the ground, patted him amicably on the shoulder, and stood to talk to Han, who had watched the entire spectacle with an expression of extreme skepticism on his face.

"Djo," he said as she stood to face him, "you friends with this guy?"

Teneniel Djo shrugged, whether as an expression of her lack of strong feelings towards Isolder or because she simply didn't understand Han, he knew not.

"No important there," she opened the conversation by patting Han's belly, which he was still massaging absently, in what she meant to be a playfully reassuring way. He didn't necessarily agree with her on that one, but at least he wasn't hungry now and, anyway, there were more important things to deal with.

"Leia," he began, "My… girl." He mimed his attachment to Leia by jabbing at his chest and tracing both hands in the air in what he hoped was the universal hourglass symbol for women, and then locked his two hands together in a tight grasp for good measure. Teneniel Djo nodded a little quizzically.

"You two," he pointed to Teneniel Djo and then to Isolder, "see her?" He mimed seeing by arranging two fingers as though they were coming out of his eyes. Teneniel Djo cocked her head quizzically. It took seven more precious minutes (he was counting) for him to convey to her that Leia, his Leia, was lost somewhere in this forest and another two for her to convey back to him that she hadn't seen her or any sign of her.

"Well, then we have to kriffing _find_ her!" he stormed, before turning abruptly and walking up the Falcon and placing his palm against the sensor. It read his finger tips and acknowledged him as the primary owner, welcoming him with the beloved hiss-click sound of the ramp unlocking and depressurizing. He had never been so happy to hear the whirring of the tertiary motor as it lowered the ramp down. He climbed on before it had even quite settled against the ground and was halfway up it by the time it did, breathing in the familiar scent of his ship. Without realizing he was doing it, he breathed a quick sigh of relief to see that everything was still in place, and then headed straight for the galley. First stuffing several packs of ration bars and protein-fiber cubes into the pockets of a vest he grabbed from where it was hanging on a hook on one of the bulkheads and refilling his canteen from the water dispenser, it took him only a few moments to gather what he needed and return to the main hold, where he found Teneniel Djo. She had evidently followed him up the ramp and into the ship and was now standing in the center of the hold, slack-jawed with wonder. Ships were even more amazing than she had previously imagined.

"Ship," she said, "you?" Han looked at her and then around them, where her eyes continued to rove over the ship's contents.

"Yeah. Definitely. Ship, me. My ship," he nodded emphatically, pointing back and forth from himself to the ship. There were to be no doubts about his ownership of the Falcon. She nodded acquiescently.

"You, ship. Me, sisters… go to you, ship?" she asked. He frowned at her. What? Where was Threepio when you needed him, anyway? But it didn't take him long to decipher her request. After all, people in possession of ships capable of carrying passengers and/or freight quickly become used to requests of a particular nature, and this was one of those.

"You and your sisters want me to take you somewhere on my ship?" he said, raising his eyebrows at Teneniel Djo. Obviously not completely understanding him, she raised her eyebrows and then began to mime what she meant in attempt to clarify the issue. After a few seconds of watching her, Han decided that his initial conjecture had been correct and began to nod.

"Sure. Yeah. We'll see. You and your sisters can come on my ship to wherever you want… _if_ you help me find Leia – girl," he told her slowly, accompanying his words with an elaborate set of mimes. (Where _was_ Threepio when you needed him?) Finally in agreement, the two of them left the _Falcon_. Han palmed the sensor again, shutting and locking the ramp; he smacked one of the landing trestles solidly a few times, wishing he could communicate to his ship that he hoped he would be returning soon… with Leia.

He was startled out of his reverie by the sound of Teneniel Djo whistling harshly into the air, two fingers firmly planted between her lips. After three whistles, she cocked her head, listening for a response. A few moments later, seemingly satisfied, she folded her legs beneath her and sat down serenely while Han stood impatiently, not sure of what she was doing and not sure whether he should wait to see or whether he should leave in search of Leia immediately.

"Signal," she explained after a moment, "sisters come." _Ah. Well, that clears everything right up_, he thought to himself, mentally rolling his eyes. Less than five minutes seemed to have gone by when three women, similarly attired in suits of some sort of reptilian skin, came bounding out of the forest and across the grass towards them. They made fists of their right hands and punched Teneniel Djo in the side of the neck one by one; Han was about to step forwards in her defense when he noticed she was laughing and punching them in return. He pushed aside his thoughts as to their strangeness so as to concentrate on understanding what was going on.

The four women were talking animatedly, (all four of them at once, but that didn't seem to confuse anyone but Han – and probably Isolder, but he was still recovering a few yards away). It was only a few minutes before they turned to Han and looked him up and down appraisingly.

"Sisters go. Message," Teneniel Djo told him in her usual highly elucidating manner. "Help find woman. You follow." Han grasped what he thought to be the main idea: that he was to follow one of the women which would, somehow, aid his efforts to locate Leia. He sighed. If that was how it had to be. He had nodded his thanks to the women and was about to follow the one in the green suit that Teneniel Djo had indicated when he heard his name being called.

"General Solo!" cried Isolder, getting to his knees in an unsuccessful attempt to stand. He was looking quickly back and forth between Teneniel Djo and Han. Sure, she was cute (all right, fine – beautiful), but that didn't mean he wanted to be her captive for any kind of extended period. Han turned around, annoyed, and rolled his eyes. _Oh, right. Can't forget fancy-pants_.

"General Solo, you mentioned your acquaintanceship with some members of this civilization. I'm still not quite sure of my position with them but I know that my mother would, of course, recompense you quite admirably for any services you would provide to me, and-" Han cut him off mid-sentence.

"Yeah, shut up a second; I'll see what I can do," he told the still-kneeling prince.

"Teneniel Djo, could I have this guy? I take him?" Han asked, gesturing elaborately to symbolize an exchange of ownership of the prince. After a quick conference, Teneniel Djo nodded and confirmed, "You take him." She glanced back over to the man. He _was_ cute, there was no denying it, but, upon reflection, he just didn't seem very… well… _bright_. And it was much better to have clever daughters than pretty ones. And there was really enough prettiness in the women of Teneniel Djo's family to ensure that her daughters would probably be reasonably attractive. So, really, it was all for the best. She shrugged and tried to convince herself to turn her back on the departing men.

Han walked over and hauled Isolder (for the second time that day) to his feet and began walking with him. Isolder kept looking back every few seconds to see if Teneniel Djo was still watching them and Han would have bet a few credits (but not his pants) on the fact that Teneniel Djo was sneaking looks at Isolder when he wasn't looking.

"You know, fancy-pants," he said as they began to walk, more to distract Isolder from his painfully obvious glancing technique than because he actually wanted to converse with the man, "I stopped using my mother to get me out of sticky spots when I was about two."


End file.
